< CAMP-FIRES 

AND GUIDE-POSTS 



B^ I HENRY \M DYKE 




>!»*.. 




C!assIZS_3J_iX 

Book ^0^ 

GopightN" L 



CQEVRIGUT DEPOStr. 



BY HENRY VAN DYKE 



The Valley of Vision 
Fighting for Peace 
The Unknown Quantity 
The Ruling Passion 
The Blue Flower 



Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts 
Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land 
Days Off 
Little Rivers 
Fisherman's Luck 



Poems, Collection in one volume 



Golden Stars 

The Red Flower 

The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems 

The White Bees, and Other Poems 

The Builders, and Other Poems 

Music, and Other Poems 

The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems 

The House of Rimmon 



Studies in Teimyson 
Poems of Tennyson 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



CAMP-FIRES 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 




From a photograph hy Mathilde Weil. 

The bird-bath in the garden. 



CAMP-FIRES 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 



A BOOK OF 
ESSAYS AND EXCURSIONS 



BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



When Paradise was lost I thought everything was ended. 
But it was only begun." 

— Solomon Single witz: The Life of Adam. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1921 



Copyright, 1920, 1921, by Charles Scribner's Sons 
Published April, 1921 






^'1 A 6 14 377 



THE SCRIBNER PRESS 



MAV -4 1921 



TO 

MY DATJGHTER AND CHUM 

PAULA VAN DYKE CHAPIN 

OTHERWISE CALLED 
LITTLE FUJI-SAN 



PREFACE 

Some of the chapters in this book were written 
as a series of monthly papers in Scrihner's Maga- 
zine in the years 1920-21. I have ventured to add 
a few things, — interludes, you may call them, — 
which may be taken as talks by the camp-fire. At 
the end I have included four little chapters of re- 
membrance, — memorioe posita, — tributes to four be- 
loved fellow-travellers. 

Henry van Dyke. 

AvALON, February 22, 1921. 





CONTENTS 




I. 


Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts 


Page 

3 


II. 


A Certain Insularity of Islanders 


19 


III. 


A Basket of Chips 


37 


IV. 


Self, Neighbor, and Company 


41 


V. 


Sympathetic Antipathies 


59 


VI. 


Publicomania 


77 


VII. 


Moving Day 


83 


VIII. 


Firelight Views 


100 


IX. 


Fishing in Strange Waters 


120 


X. 


The Pathless Profession 


142 


XI. 


A Mid-Pacific Pageant 


152 


XII. 


Japonica 


174 


XIII. 


Interludes on the Koto 


198 


XIV. 


Suicidal Tendencies in Democracy 


203 


XV. 


A Bundle of Letters 


228 


XVI. 


Christmas Greens 


233 


XVII. 


On Saying Good-Bye 


251 



IX 



CONTENTS 

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS : 

PAGE 

XVIII. An Old-style American ' 271 

XIX. Interpreter's House 290 

XX. The Healing Gift 300 

XXI. A Traveller from Altruria 310 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The bird-bath in the garden Frontispiece 

Facing page 

The round stone toiver 20 

Is not moving day marked in all our calen- 
dars? 96 

In andirons I would admit a little fancy 106 

The ancient, apostolic, consolatory art of 

angling 140 

A house with broad lanai and long pergola 160 

The temple-garden where the iris blooms 

around the pond 188 

Camp-fires beneath the trees 



CAMP-FIRES AND 
POSTS 



GUIDE 



la 



CAMP-F iiJS AND GUIDE-POSTS 

J. HE title of these rambling essays is taken from 
two things that are pleasant and useful on the 
common ways of life. 

Let me confess at the outset that by camp-fires 
and guide-posts I intend more than the literal mean- 
ing of the words. I use them for their significance. 

The camp-fire is the conservative symbol. It 
invites to rest and fellowship and friendly council, 
not unmixed with that good cheer which is suggested 
when we call a conference of wits a "symposium." 
There is no denying the fact that man's best dis- 
course has always been at a common meal, whether 
spread on the green grass or on a mahogany table. 
Of the elders of Israel in the Exodus, it is recorded 
that "they saw God and did eat and drink." This 
is a gentle hint that however soulful a man's soul 
may be, in his present mixed estate the body had 
its claims, which it is both lawful and necessary 
to satisfy, in order that the spiritual part may not 
be hampered and disordered. Hunger, thirst, and 

3 



CAMP-FIRES 

indigestion are imfavorable alike to clear thought 
and calm devotion. 

The guide-post is the progressive sign. It calls 
us to continue our journey, and gives information 
in regard to direction and distance, which (if cor- 
rect) has considerable value to the traveller. 

Every social theory, every moral maxim, every 
appeal of preacher or political orator, every bit of 
propaganda printed or spoken, yes, even every 
advertisement in the newspapers or on the bill- 
boards, whether false or true, is of the nature of a 
guide-post. 

Every place where men rest and repose with 
warmth to cheer them — ^the hollow in the woods 
where pilgrims or tramps gather about the blazing 
sticks, the snug cottage where the kettle simmers 
on the hearth, the royal castle where an ancient 
coat-of-arms is carved on the mantelpiece, the vast 
palatial hotel where sovereign democracy flaunts 
its new-found wealth and commercial travellers 
bask in the heat of concealed steam-radiators — 
every one of these is nothing more nor less than a 
camp-fire. 

No human progress is unbroken and continuous. 
No human resting-place is permanent. Where are 

4 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

Pharaoh's Palace, and Solomon's Temple, and the 
House of Csesar, and Cicero's Tusculum, and 
Horace's Sabine farm? 

I remember what General William Tecumseh 
Sherman — ^fine old campaigner — said to me when 
he first came to New York to live in his own house. 
"I've made a new camp. Plenty of wood and water. 
Come over." 

We might get more comfort out of this sane and 
wholesome philosophy of life, if it were not for the 
violent extremists of the Right and the Left, who 
revile and buffet us alternately when we try to push 
ahead and when we stop to think. I have good 
friends on both sides, but at times they treat me 
vilely as an enemy. 

The trouble with the Radicals is that they are 
always urging us to travel somewhither, anywhither, 
ignoring the past, condemning the present, and 
hurling ourselves blindfold into the future. 

The trouble with the Conservatives is that they 
are always luUing us to stay where we are, to be 
content with our present comforts, and to look 
with optimistic eyes on the bright side of our neigh- 
bors' discomforts. 

Neither pessimism nor optimism pleases me. I 
5 



CAMP-FIRES 

am a meliorist, — to use the word which Doctor John 
Brown of Edinburgh coined in 1858. 

Therefore I refuse to engage in the metaphysical 
triangular conflict between the past, the present, 
and the future. It means nothing to me. Yester- 
day is a memory. To-morrow is a hope. To-day 
is the fact. But tell me, would the fact be what 
it is without the memory and the hope? Are not 
all three equally real ? 

I grant you there is a distinction between the 
actual and the imaginary. But it is not a difference 
in essence. It is only a difference in origin and 
form. What we call the actual has its origin in a 
fact outside of us. What we call the imaginary 
has its origin in a fact within us. 

A burned finger and a burning indignation are 
equally real. 

Memory is simply imagination looking back: 
hope, looking forward. 

The imaginary is not non-existent. It exists in 
the mind — the very same place where every per- 
ception through the senses has its present and only 
being. 

When 1 was a boy I cut my hand with my first 
pocket-knife. But the physical scar of that actual 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

accident, now almost invisible, is less vivid than 
the memory of the failure of my ambition to be- 
come a great orator. In that collegiate contest, 
fifty years ago, the well-prepared phrase fled from 
my paralyzed brain, 

**voxfaucibus kaesity* 

and I sat down feeling that Kfe was ended. But 
it was not. 

You remember, as of yesterday, those pleasant 
afternoon walks on Fifth Avenue from Madison 
Square to Central Park, in the last quarter of the 
Nineteenth Century, when the air was clean and 
bright, the sky-line low, and on every block you 
had greetings from good friends. To-day, if duty 
compels, you plunge through that same mile-and- 
a-half , shut in by man-made cUffs of varying degrees 
of ugliness, stifled by fumes of gasolene from the 
conglomerate motor-cars, and worming your way 
through malodorous or highly perfumed throngs of 
"Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, dwellers in Meso- 
potamia and Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and 
Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and strangers of 
Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Ara- 
bians." Few indeed are the native Americans you 

7 



CAMP-FIRES 

meet, struggling like yourself among the conflicting 
tides,— 

"rari nantes in gurgite vasto*' 

Yet, even on such a walk, if you think serenely, 
you have a hope of something better in the long 
to-morrow: a modem city in which the curse of 
crowding shall be mitigated by wiser dispositions 
of traffic, transportation, and housing: a city in 
which there shall be room for homes and play- 
grounds, as well as for temples and court-houses: 
a city in which the rights of property shall be safe- 
guarded chiefly as essential to the supreme right 
of life. 

The memory, the fact, the hope, are equally real. 
But tell me, brother, can we really make sure of 
our guide-posts unless we take counsel together 
beside our camp-fires? 

The secret of perpetual motion has not yet been 
discovered. Human nature demands intervals of 
rest and relaxation as the unexempt condition of 
our mortal frailty. 

Here is where I find my stance for a drive. Go 
forward we must, imless we are willing to slip back- 
ward. But we cannot know that we are going for- 

8 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

ward, without stopping to talk over our common 
concerns beside the camp-fire. 

Good humor is one of the prerequisites of sound 
judgment. 

I have seen needful work done by men in excite- 
ment and an ill temper, but never truth discovered 
nor creative things accomplished. My old gar- 
dener used to swear horribly when he was rooting 
out poison-ivy. But when he was studying how 
to make flowers or vegetables grow better, he was 
in a friendly mood — ^whistling or singing. 

Emerson has a good word on this. "Nothing 
will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and 
to make knowledge valuable, you must have the 
cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely 
pleased you are nourished. The joy of the spirit 
indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet- 
tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness 
smiles to the last; and, for the reason, that who- 
ever sees the law which distributes things does not 
despond, but is animated by great desires and en- 
deavors. He who desponds betrays that he has not 
seen it." 

But what about the man who frets and fumes 
and froths at the mouth when he propounds his 

9 



CAMP-FIRES 

favorite dogma ? What about the guide-post enthu- 
siasts who pronounce double damnation on us if 
we do not rush forward at once on their favorite 
roads to Utopia ? What about the camp-fire seden- 
taries who declare that unless we "stand pat" pre- 
cisely where we are, we are doomed to perdition ? 

Methinks, gentlemen, you do protest too much. 
The violence of your protest indicates a certain 
insecurity of the ground whereon you stand. You 
would base your programme upon ignorance of 
what men learned in Athens, Sparta, Carthage, 
Sicily, and Rome, long ago. That will not go ! We 
fall back upon one of those vital phrases with which 
slang has enriched our language — ''show meT* 

Nor are we willing, if we can prevent it, to have 
tried upon our tender bodies and souls the old ex- 
periments which were tried so long ago and which 
resulted in lamentable failure. 

Why suffer twice to learn the same lesson? 

Conununism, agrarianism, proletarianism, anarch- 
ism, have all had their day, and it was a bad day, — ■ 
in Athens and Sparta and Rome and Jerusalem 
and Paris. Why give them another day? 

The divine right of kings and capitalists to im- 
pose their will upon their fellow men has been tested 

10 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

many times and has always failed to make good 
before the throne of Eternal Wisdom and Righteous- 
ness. The bloody bankruptcy of the French reign 
of terror was no worse, and no better, than the 
breakdown of the attempt of the Holy Alliance 
to re-establish the tyranny of hereditary titles and 
unjust prerogatives. 

Why ask. us to return to these old discredited 
theories? They are not really guide-posts. They 
are signs of "no thoroughfare." Give us something 
really new, gentlemen. Think out some better way 
of co-operation between the "haves** and the "have- 
nots.'* Devise some better mode of inducing the 
lazy to work, and of restraining the clever and in- 
dustrious from claiming exorbitant gains. That 
is what we need, as surely as two and two make 
four. 

If you can do this, I promise you that a con- 
siderable company of the intellectual middle class, 
neither "high-brows'* who think they know it all, 
nor "low-brows** who maintain that nothing is 
worth knowing, will be ready for a promising ad- 
venture. Meantime we follow the old guide-posts 
which have been proved, and take our needful ease 
by the camp-fires where we find creature comforts 

11 



CAMP-FIRES 

and friendly talk. And if our camp is attacked by 
brigands, we shall be ready for them. 

I was rereading the other day one of the dia- 
logues of Plato, called ThecBtetuSy and came upon 
a passage which seemed to depict the position of 
thoughtful people in our own time. Plato is speak- 
ing of a philosopher endeavoring to instruct and 
guide a practical man of the world. "But, O my 
friend," says he, "when he draws the other into 
the upper air, and gets him out of his pleas and 
rejoinders into the contemplation of justice and 
injustice in their own nature, or from the common- 
places about the happiness of kings to the considera- 
tion of government, and of human happiness and 
misery in general — ^what they are and how a man 
should seek after the one and avoid the other — 
when that narrow, keen, little legal mind of his is 
called to account about all this, he gives the phi- 
losopher his revenge. For being dizzied by the 
height at which he is hanging, he being dismayed 
and lost and stammering out broken words, is 
laughed at not only by Thracian handmaidens or 
any other uneducated persons, for they have no 
eye for the situation, but by every man who has 
not been brought up a slave. Such are the two 

n 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

characters, Theodorus; the one of the philosopher 
or gentleman, who may be excused for appearing 
futile and inefficient when he has to perform some 
servile office, such as packing a bag, or flavoring 
a sauce, or making a flattering speech; the other, 
of the man of affairs who is able to do every service 
smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear 
his cloak like a gentleman; still less does he acquire 
the music of speech or hymn, in the true life which 
is lived by immortals or men blessed by heaven." 

This is a fair description, two thousand years 
old, of the difference between the "high-brow" 
and the "low-brow." But from this Plato goes 
on to tell us something more important. "Evils," 
says he, "can never perish; for there must always 
remain something which is antagonistic to good. 
. . . But, O my friend, you cannot easily convince 
mankind that they should avoid vice or pursue 
virtue for the reason which the majority give, in 
order, forsooth, to appear respectable;— this is 
what people are always repeating, and this, in my 
judgment, is an old wives' tale. Let us get back 
to the truth ! In God is no unrighteousness at all — 
He is altogether righteous; and there is nothing 
more like Him than the man among us who is the 

13 



CAMP-FIRES 

most righteous. And the true wisdom of men, and 
their nothingness and cowardice, are closely bound 
up with this. For to know this is true wisdom and 
manhood, and to ignore this is folly and vice. All 
other kinds of so-called wisdom, such as the wis- 
dom of politicians or the wisdom of the arts, are 
coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the 
sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better 
not cherish the illusion that his roguery is clever- 
ness. Let us tell him frankly that he does not realize 
what kind of creature he is. He does not know the 
penalty of unrighteousness: not stripes and death, 
as he supposes, which evil-doers often elude, but 
a final punishment from which there is no escape." 

You would not take so long and stern a sermon 
from a modern preacher. But will you not consider 
it from the broad-shouldered, wide-browed Plato, 
who lived four hundred years before Christ? Will 
you not read it as a comment upon those modern 
knaves who twist the guide-posts around and swear 
that good is evil and vice is virtuous; those long- 
haired, lantern-jawed mockers who protest that 
property is theft and that highway robbery is the 
triumph of justice ? 

I do not mean to be drawn into a discussion of 
14 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

the bold brutalities of the Bolsheviki in Russia, or 
the sneaking villainies of the I. W. W. in America. 
These lie outside of the region of literature. They 
are to be met not with essays and orations, but 
with laws and guns. The decencies of life, the securi- 
ties of home, the safeguards of social order, having 
been won, by toil and fighting, from the abyss of 
barbarism, will not be suffered to perish. Neither 
the fury of the antisocial maniacs, nor the senti- 
mentalism of the social imbeciles will be permitted 
to destroy them. We look to statesmen and war- 
riors to take care of this. 

But what I am thinking of is the normal life 
of humanity — a journey with frequent, necessary 
halts — as Matthew Arnold describes it in Rugby 
Chapel : 

"See ! In the rocks of the world 
Marches the host of mankind, 
A feeble, wavering line. 
Where are they tending ? A god 
Marshall'd them, gave them their goal. 
Ah, but the way is so long ! 
Years they have been in the wild: 
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks 
Rising all round overawe; 
Factions divide them, their host 
15 



CAMP-FIRES 

Threatens to break, to dissolve. 
— ^Ah, keep, keep them combined ! 
Else, of the myriads who fill 
That army, not one shall arrive; 
Sole shall they stray; in the rocks 
Stagger forever in vain. 
Die one by one in the waste." 

Yes, we must hold together, and go forward to- 
gether, and take our wayside rest together. That 
is what I mean to write about in these essays. The 
enjoyment of the camp-fires. The scrutiny of the 
guide-posts. 

But you must not suspect me of having an ul- 
terior design of springing a new theory of the uni- 
verse upon you, nor of subtly advertising a panacea 
for all 

"The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to." 

No, gentle reader, I am as much in the dark as you 
are, and with you I suffer 

**The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 

*Tis a rough, confused, turbulent age in which we 
have to live. But it is the only age that is given 

16 



AND GUIDE-POSTS 

to us. Let us make the best of it. And above all 
let us not lose either our loyalty to truth or our 
sense of humor. 

For my own part I confess my prepossession in 
favor of the small but useful virtues — like fair play, 
and punctuality, and common courtesy. 

If I write of these things, more than of the ulti- 
mate ethical theories which engage our modern 
philpsophists, you will understand and forgive me. 
I do not profess to have solved the riddle of exist- 
ence. Let us try out our guesses together by the 
camp-fire. 

And you, my young brother, don't think that 
because I am old, I am necessarily aged, and against 
you. You are my friend, my hope, my reliance. 

I am not quite so sure of anything — ^not even of 
my doubts, denials, and prejudices — as I was in 
my youth. But I have had some experience of 
what agrees with body and soul, as Keats says in 
his ode to the bards of passion and mirth, 

"What doth strengthen and what maim." 

By that knowledge I try to steer my course toward 
peace and a certain degree of usefulness. 

The minor morals of life attract me. I like real 
17 



CAMP-FIRES 

and decent folk of all creeds and parties. But I 
have no confidence in catchwords, either of au- 
tocracy or democracy, nor in universal suffrage as^ 
the cure-all of man's infirmity. 
Christ was crucified by a referendum. 



18 



II 

A CERTAIN INSULARITY OP 
ISLANDERS 

This curious quality of human nature first at- 
tracted my notice some forty years ago, when I 
went to work in Newport, an ancient little city 
(from the American point of view) situate on the 
island of Rhode Island, in the State of Rhode Isl- 
and. 

There, in the centre of Touro Park, stands the 
round stone tower which the romanticists revere as 
relic of the discovery of America by the Norsemen 
centuries before Columbus sailed, and which the 
factualists regard as the remains of a windmill built 
in the seventeenth century to grind Indian com. 

But you are mistaken if you suppose that a mere 
archaeological dispute like this made any difference 
in the insular feeling of the native Newporters. 

Was the tower built by Leif the Viking when he 
found his colony of Vinland? That only showed 
how well the old Norse adventurer "knew his way 
about," when he picked out the island of Rhode 

19 



CAMP-FIRES 

Island as the most beautiful and salubrious spot in 
a whole new worid, — an island abundant in the wild 
fox-grapes with which Nature fills her loving-cup 
for man, and blessed with a douce climate in which 
the Gulf Stream tempers alike the rigors of winter 
and the ardors of summer to an enjoyable though 
relaxing suavity. 

Was the tower erected by a prudent and prosper- 
ous English colonist to triturate his maize in the 
days of Roger Williams ? That only illustrated the 
well-known fact that the corn-meal of Rhode Isl- 
and, — ^white, minutely granular, and highly nutri- 
tious, — ^was, and still is, the finest on earth, and posi- 
tively the only cereal fit for the making of the suc- 
culent Johnny-cake, unexcelled among the foods of 
mankind. 

I found the insularity of these islanders absolutely 
cwrect about the superiority of their corn-meal; 
also about the supremacy of the Rhode Island tur- 
key as a "pi^ce de resistance** in a banquet. 

But I foimd much more than this. Rhode Island 
was not, as I in my Knickerbocker ignorance had 
supposed, a fraction of New England, supine be- 
tween Massachusetts and Connecticut. It was an 
independent and sovereign, though diminutive, 

20 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

State. It had its own traditions and its own ideals, 
inherited from the Founder, Roger Williams, that 
best of Puritans, — ^who held that the freedom of his 
own conscience implied an equal liberty for others. 

The magic names .of Massachusetts, — ^Adams, 
Endicott, Quincy, Cabot, Lodge, Hallowell, Han- 
cock, and so on, — carried no sf)ell with them in 
Rhode Island. There Arnold, Greene, Coggeshall, 
Coddington, Clarke, Easton, Vernon, Buffum, Ham- 
mett, Sheffield, and so on, — forgive me if I forget a 
few, — ^were the names of insular renown. Their in- 
heritors, no matter whether they were now engaged 
in commerce, carpentry, or agriculture, or living 
quietly on diminished estates in gambrel-roofed 
houses, belonged to the first families. 

The old retired sea-captains, — ^portly, ruddy men, 
who had a trace of profanity in their speech even 
when they argued for the orthodox religion, — ^formed 
a class of their own. Like Ulysses they could say: 

"Much have I seen and known: cities of men. 
And manners, climates, councils, governments." 

But unlike that insatiable old wanderer, they pre- 
ferred the climate of their own sea-girt isle to any 
other in the world. Its ways and manners, councils 

21 



CAMP-FIRES 

and traditions, contented them to the core. They 
had sailed abroad, come home to the best, and set- 
tled down. They were conserved conservatives. 

This was the atmosphere and spirit of the old 
Newport, with its narrow streets, gambrel roofs, 
house-doors opening directly upon the sidewalk, 
square chimneys, and small-paned windows. The 
new Newport, which was at that time just begin- 
ning to expand its million-dollar "cottages" along 
the Cliffs, and to display its expensive and much- 
divorced social luxuriance along the misnamed 
Bellevue Avenue, made Uttle impression on the real 
islanders. They regarded it mainly as a "passing 
show," and incidentally as an opportunity of in- 
creased gains from real estate and retail trade. 

I recall an observation made by my father when 
he was walking with me and one of my Newport 
deacons on the Avenue. Gilded youths passed us in 
gorgeous equipages, and were pointed out and iden- 
tified. That was so-and-so, or such-a-one, who had 
married this-or-the-other millionaire's daughter. 
"Well," said my governor, smiling imder his brown 
beard, "I think this part of Newport ought to be 
called *Son-in-Law City.' " The remark passed 
into a proverb in the old town 
22 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

They were pleasant people to live and work with, 
those native Newporters and the folks who had set- 
tled in with them. Their self-content, not being 
bumptious, sweetened their ways and made them 
easy-going. Many friends I found among them: a 
gentle, lame bookseller, who knew both men and 
books; a schoolmaster whose latinity was as admi- 
rable as his natural wit; a cabinet-maker whose hand- 
wrought furniture was without a flaw; a shoemaker 
whose soles were as honest as his soul; a retired gen- 
tleman whose chief luxuries were good Uterature, 
good music, and good talk; and most of all, my pred- 
ecessor in the pastorate, the old Domine, learned 
and humorous, a famous story-teller, whose favor- 
ite doctrine was that the first of the virtues is hu- 
mility,— of which he had plenty and was very proud. 

In fact the insularity of the place, as I grew to 
comprehend it, gave me sincere pleasure. The only 
point on which it irked me was that these island- 
people seemed to know little and care less about the 
distinguished position in American history of my 
own particular island, — ^Long Island, with its fa- 
mous metropolis of Brooklyn, then a large New 
England village, which has since been absorbed into 
the cosmopolis of New York. This indifference to 
23 



CAMP-FIRES 

the claims of Brooklyn chafed me a bit; but I ac- 
cepted it with the generous superiority of youth. So 
I had four happy years in Newport. 

The next time I had occasion to consider the true 
meaning of insularity was when I began to make ac- 
quaintance with the island of Great Britain, includ- 
ing its local divisions of England, Scotland, and 
Wales. Here is a wonderful bit of "land surrounded 
by water," situate off the western coast of Europe, 
which has a more distinct individuahty and has ex- 
ercised a more powerful influence on the history of 
the modem world than any country of the conti- 
nent. 

Now what do you find in contact with the Briton, 
social, intellectual, pohtical, as the basis of his 
thought and feeling? The conviction that his isl- 
and is central and superior, and that his own way 
of looking at things and of doing things is the right 
way. 

"Every Englishman," wrote NovaHs in a spirit 
of German mockery, "is an island." Yes, beloved 
philosopher; but at least he is separate from the 
mainland of Prussia; and he regards the surrounding 
sea not merely as his protection, but also as his 
means of communication with the rest of the world. 
24 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

He is the most widely travelled of provincials. But 
he never forgets where he came from. 

The Englishman is that member of the human 
family who regards his personal habits as sacred 
rites. His morning tub accompanies him into 
Thibet. His afternoon tea is a function in India. 
His pale ale is placarded on the Pyramids. 

The thing that an American notices on first meet- 
ing an Englishman, at home or abroad, is his high 
coast-line. If you pass that chalk cliff, you discover 
the richness, fertility, hospitality of the island. No- 
where do you feel more a foreigner (except for the 
language) than on your first arrival in England; and 
nowhere more at home, when you have lived through 
the early shocks into a friendly intimacy. 

The notable social quality of England is the dis- 
tinction between classes and the simplicity within 
them. George Washington would have understood 
this better than we do. But even now it is disap- 
pearing a little as the House of Lords is periodically 
enlarged from the ranks of brewers and makers of 
newspapers and of soap. All honors to them ! But 
they are still expected to conform in manners, to 
say nothing of religion, if they wish to find their 
places in the blessed British insularity. 

25 



CAMP-FIRES 

Often in England have I met with frankness, 
bluffness» even brusqueness; but only twice with 
rudeness. Once it was from a duchess of plebeian 
birth; which was not astonishing. The other time 
it was from a shrivelled curator in a university li- 
brary; which gave me a shiver of surprise. 

But since then, what courtesy and hospitality 
have I found in English and Scotch houses, and in 
the most ancient of British universities, gray home of 
the golden dream I What friendly and fruitful talk 
in mellow voices, cheered by sound wine before an 
open fire ! What intimate understanding of the 
best meaning of culture ! What sincere disregard of 
the pratings of publicity! What good fellowship, 
based on the ideals of fine literature and fair morals, 
shown in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and their 
followers ! 

The only difficulty I had was to persuade some of 
those modern Englishmen that the supposed Amer- 
icanism, "I guess,** was a direct inheritance from 
Spenser and Shakespeare; and that our pronuncia- 
tion of "been** to rhyme with "bin,** and our habit 
of saying "different from" instead of "different to" 
had good old English authority behind them. My 
friends were delightfully insular, but they did not 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

go far enough back in the history of their insvla. 
Finally I gave up the effort to enlighten them and 
settled down comfortably with my "Americanisms." 

I had many opportunities to observe the course 
of the American Rhodes Scholars in Oxford. It ap- 
peared to divide itself into three periods. First, 
irritation, when they rebelled against English cus- 
toms. Second, imitation, when they vainly en- 
deavored to acquire an Oxford accent and manner. 
Third (but this only for the finest of them), asdmi- 
latioriy when they took in the best of English culture 
and sweetened their inborn, inbred Americanism 
with it. 

Emerson wrote in 1856: "I am afraid that Eng- 
lish nature is so rank and aggressive as to be a lit- 
tle incompatible with any other. The worid is not 
wide enough for two.'* 

Hawthorne, a little later, wrote: "An American 
is not apt to love the English people as a whole, on 
whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that 
they would value our regard, and even reciprocate 
it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to 
them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a 
curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels 
them, as it were, to keep up what they consider a 

27 



CAMP-FIRES 

wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves 
and all other nationalities, especially that of Amer- 
ica." 

These were comments marked by asperity more 
than by urbanity. But it must be remembered that 
they were made about the period of our Civil War, 
which was not precisely the golden age of Anglo- 
American relations. I think the earUer remarks of 
Irving and the later observations of Lowell were 
more to the point. 

The English took unfavorable criticisms from 
this side of the water ill, yet with far less perturba- 
tion and indignation than we Americans showed at 
the caustic caricatures of Mrs. TroUope and Charles 
Dickens. We knew that some of our people were 
rude and crude; but why remind us of it so rudely 
and crudely ? We were furiously angry and we let 
the world know it. The English may have been 
equally vexed, but they made less fuss about it, 
perhaps because of their more perfect insularity. 

The man whose good opinion of himself is solid 
can afford to be imperturbable. It is when vanity 
is insecure that it grows touchy. 

Is not English the only great language in which 
the pronoun of the first person singular is capital- 

28 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

ized? How monumentally imposing is that upper 
case "I'M If a writer is egoistic the capitals stretch 
across his page like a colonnade. When he writes 
"we," he descends to the lower case. 

But this orthographic solipsism, mark you, is 
shared by Americans, Canadians, Australians, New 
Zealanders, — ^all who use the English tongue. It is 
therefore not to be set down to insularity, but to in- 
dividualism, — a stark, ineradicable, valuable qual- 
ity of these various folks whose thoughts and feel- 
ings have been nourished by the same language. 

It comes to its philosophic climax in the Yankee 
Emerson who held the infinity and sufficiency of the 
private man, and declared, "I wish to say what I 
think and feel to-day, with the proviso that perhaps 
to-morrow I shall contradict it all." No Briton, not 
even Carlyle, could beat that. 

It is all very well to have confidence in yourself, 
but when it passes into contempt for the rest of 
mankind it becomes a different matter. Plato said: 
"Self-will is a companion of solitude." 

There are some men who consider comment on 
the faults of others equivalent to an exhibition of 
their own virtues. Self-complacency of that kind is 
seldom shared by the neighbors. 



CAMP-FIRES 

Once in a while a Briton, otherwise of good dis- 
position and temperament, falls into that extrava- 
gance of insularity. Sidney Smith gave an illus- 
tration of it when he wrote in 1820, "Who reads an 
American book? or goes to an American play? or 
looks at an American picture or statue?" 

Well, at that very time, a noted English poet, 
Thomas Campbell, had read the poems of Philip 
Freneau of New Jersey closely enough to steal a fine 
verse from one of them, — 

"The hunter and the deer, a shade," — 

and embody it in his own poem 0* Connor'' s Child. 
At that very time Lamb was praising the Journal 
of the American Quaker, John Woolman; and Walter 
Scott was admiring Washington Irving's Sketch 
Book. At that very time an American painter, 
Benjamin West of Philadelphia, was, and had been 
for twenty-seven years, president of the Royal 
Academy in London. Nay, it is reported that Sid- 
ney Smith himself jocosely threatened to disinherit 
his daughter if she did not like the writings of Ben- 
jamin Franklin. So you see his supercilious com- 
ment in the Review was of the nature of an aberra- 
tion. 

30 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

Something of the same nature I noted in Matthew 
Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, when he 
visited this country some thirty odd years ago. A 
genial Scotch-American in Brooklyn, a bon-vivant of 
the old school, made a feast for him, at which there 
was excellent company and delicate fare, including, 
of course, canvasback ducks, done to a turn, — ^just 
twenty minutes, — and a small bottle with each bird. 
The distinguished guest looked at his plate, seemed 
at a loss, and then leaning across the table said to 
an American bishop in a tone rather more audible 
than he used in his lectures: "Bishop, how is it that 
you nevah know how to cook birds in your country ? " 
The bishop blushed, and confessed that he could 
not quite explain it. 

It was what the French call "une gaffe,*' of course: 
but it was not ill-natured, and therefore not really 
rude. Who would not pardon a little thing like that 
to the man who had written Essays in Criticism^ 
and Sohrab and Rustem, and Rugby Chapel, and all 
the rest of Arnold's fine and noble works ? 

The truth is, there is a mental and moral kinship 
between Great Britain and America which makes 
little diflFerences in manners and occasional infelic- 
ities seem of small account. We have the same 
31 



CAMP-FIRES 

classics in literature, from the English Bible down. 
We have been nourished on the same conceptions of 
self-reliance and fair play, individual liberty and 
social order. We have the same respect for prac- 
tical efficiency, though I think the British lay more 
stress on solidity, the Americans on rapidity, of 
work. We feel the same aversion from autocracy 
and disgust for lawlessness. We like to deal with 
hard facts; but 

"We live by admiration, hope, and love." 

We resemble each other enough in great things, and 
differ enough in small, to make a mutual understand- 
ing easy, profitable, and durable, — ^provided we do 
not suffer the petty politicians to spoil it by frivo- 
lous pranks. 

Who can doubt that this good understanding 
has been increasing and deepening through the 
hundred and seven years of peace between Britain 
and America.^ We have had disputes, but they 
have been settled by the method of reason and 
justice. A thousand ties of grateful friendship have 
been woven between British and American homes. 
The best book on the American Commonwealth has 
been written by Viscount Bryce, a North Briton; 

32 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

arid the best book on the British Constitution by 
President Lowell of Harvard, a New Englander. Of 
course there are still things in American humor 
which the average Britisher does not catch imtil the 
next day, and things in British humor which the 
average Yankee never gets at all. But upon the 
whole we have learned to "swap jokes" with recip- 
rocal enjoyment. Since the common experience 
of our soldiers in the great war, fighting side by 
side in the same cause with France, we have learned 
that the British are not "a nation of shopkeepers," 
and they have learned that the Americans are not 
"a tribe of dollar-worshippers." 

Yes, I think they even understand what we mean 
when we join with them heartily in singing God 
Save the King, but refrain from Ride Britannia on 
the ground that "the tune is unfamiliar." 

But there is no reserve nor coolness in our love 
and admiration for their sea-girt home where our 
forefathers once Kved, — 

"A right little, tight little island." 

No wonder they are proud of it. From Land's 
End to John O'Groat's House, from the white cliffs 
of the Channel to the black crags of Devon and 



CAMP-FIRES 

Wales, from the broads of Lincolnshire to the firths 
and sounds of Argyle and Ross» from the rolling 
Downs to the misty Highlands, Earth has nothing 
better in the way of an island, — 

"A precious stone set in the silver sea." 

How varied, how rich, how abundant ! It is full of 
shrines and monuments, yet not crammed with 
them. The sober splendor of the cathedrals, the 
sense of solid power in the cities, the opulent ver- 
dure and bloom of the countryside, the air of per- 
manence and security aUke in castle and cottage, 
the long intimacy and fresh vigor with which Na- 
ture responds to the touch of man, — all these things 
steal upon your heart quietly and irresistibly and 
make you feel that Great Britain is the most won- 
derful country in the world next to your own. 

Ireland also is an island, — a very beautiful one, 
— and it has its own insularity. The trouble is that 
it has two insularities, one to the north, and one to 
the south. When they are harmonized to desire 
the same thing it will be a fine day for the Green 
Isle. 

There is a very pretty illustration both of the 
defects and of the virtues of insularity, in a precious 



A CERTAIN INSULARITY 

old book. It seems that a certain Vessel was 
wrecked long ago on an island called Malta. The 
ship was acting, in a way, as a government trans- 
port, for she carried a prisoner of state, named 
Paul, with his military guard. Now their guide- 
post was marked "Rome." But by reason of the 
present rain and the cold they had urgent need 
of a camp-fire. This the islanders kindled, Paul 
helping them. As he was laying sticks on the flame, 
a little poison-snake sprang out and fastened on his 
hand. Whereupon the islanders concluded that he 
was a murderer pursued by the divine Nemesis. 
But when he shook off the deadly worm and felt no 
harm, they promptly changed their minds and said 
that he was a god. These superstitions and ex- 
treme judgments belong to the dangerous side of 
insularity. But the good side came out when the 
islanders took the castaways into comfortable win- 
ter quarters, entertained them hospitably for three 
months, and loaded them with useful gifts at their 
departure. 

I have been struck of late by the multitude of 
unsuspected islands in the world. 

Regions supposed to be continental turn out to 
be surrounded by water. Princeton, New Jersey, 

35 



CAMP-FIRES 

where I live, is discovered to have an insular qual- 
ity, being enclosed by two rivers, a canal, and the 
Atlantic Ocean. The completion of the Panama 
Canal places the United States on an island. Rather 
a large one, it is true, but perhaps the subtle influ- 
ence of this geographical circumstance may have 
had something to do with a recent acute attack of 
insularity in the Senate. 

In fact, reader, you can make an island out of 
almost anything, if you wish to. An exclusive 
creed, an arbitrary taste, a political dogmatism, a 
closed mind, a dislike for children and dogs, yes, 
even a passion for musk as a personal perfume, will 
serve well enough to cut you off from other people 
if that is what you wish. 

But that is certainly the wrong kind of insularity. 
You might as well be cast away on an uninhabited 
atoll. 

The best islanders, it seems to me, are those who 
live on their islands not as hermits, nor as pirates, 
but as good and hospitable neighbors; pleased with 
their own isle, trying to improve it, and keeping up 
communications with the rest of the archipelago. 

There is a great difference between insularity and 
isolation. 



Ill 

A BASKET OF CHIPS 

Use these for your own fire, reader, if you think 
they are dry enough to make it burn brighter. I 
don't ask you to agree with me; but let me sit be- 
side you while you prove me wrong. The wet- 
blanket is the only man I can't endure. 

* * 

Life is just the process of discovering our rela- 
tionships. While they increase, we grow. When 
they diminish, we shrink. There is no death ex- 
cept for those who shut themselves up and out. 

* * 

First comes a declaration of independence: then 

a recognition of interdependence. 

* * 

It is a pity that men should be divided by their 

pleasiu'es more than by their work. 

* * 

We have a word for suffering together, — sym- 
pathy. But where is the word for rejoicing together ? 

* * 

Every possible form of government has been 
tried, and found both good and bad. They would 

37 



CAMP-FIRES 

all be intolerable but for the quiet people who trust 
in the Lord and do good. They are the only ones 
who count. Wherefore I believe there is an in- 
visible kingdom which cannot be shaken. 

* * 

Why quarrel about the social order? It is the 
social spirit that makes the difference. 

* * 

I sat next a fat commercial traveller in the 
smoking-car. He wore large diamonds, knew noth- 
ing, and found fault (profanely) with everything 
except the Russian Soviets and the Sinn Fein Re- 
public. God pity his wife, — unless she was like 

him. 

* * 

"Tact," said a witty lady, "is the unsaid part of 
what you think." Yes, and there is only one thing 
more potent, — its opposite, — the unthought part of 
what you say. 

In the big woods this is the law: Every trapper 
must keep to his own line of traps, but the camp- 
fire is open to all comers. If you are hungry, part 
of the food belongs to you. But if you take what 

38 



CHIPS 

you don't need, you are a thief and liable to be 

shot. 

* * 

Doubt is like fog. It hides things, but it does 
not destroy them. 

It is easier to get what we like than to escape 
from what we dislike. Good music is not diflScult 
to obtain. But it is hard to get away from the 
ugly noises with which the modern city is cursed. 
To open a fine vista you have only to cut a few 
trees. But to shut out an ugly view you must 
plant a grove and wait for it to grow. You will 
teach your children good principles more readily 

than you will rid them of bad habits. 

* * 

It is not BummelFs ignorance that offends me. 

It is his ignoring of his ignorance. 

* * 

"Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Cer- 
tainly! But how about Caesar? I know of no 
proverb more Turkish than this. 

* * 

'Tis a poor education of which the chief result is 
the acquisition of prejudices. 

* * 
89 



CAMP-FIRES 

The statesman who always follows public opinion 
is a pilot who always steers with the tide. He 
doesn't earn his fee. 

The mother of poets is the Earth; their father is 
the Great Spirit. 



40 



IV 

SELF, NEIGHBOR, AND COMPANY 

In every one of those ambulant firms doing busi- 
ness in life, which we call human beings, there are 
three members: the irreducible individual, the 
social colleague, and the divine silent partner. 

The last, it appears, may sometimes be excluded 
from participation in the affairs of the firm. But 
in that case there is always a danger that the re- 
maining two, (being by nature as inseparable as 
the Siamese Twins,) will come to the calamity of a 
falling-out, in which the interests of one or the other 
will suffer, or, as more frequently happens, they 
will decline together toward a common bankruptcy. 

This, you will readily perceive, is a metaphorical 
statement which demands some exercise of the 
imagination to bring it within the rubric under 
which the editor of Scribner^s announced some of 
these essays, — "comment on current events" 

The current events that interest me most are not 
those which glitter upon the surface and attract 
publicity, nor those which can be "head-lined," nor 

41 



CAMP-FIRES 

those which emerged yesterday with a splash and 
are likely to disappear to-morrow or next day under 
impermanent ripples; but those which began long 
ago and promise or threaten to continue a long 
time, those which are unmarketable as news, those 
which run beneath the noise and turbulence of 
clashing waves. In short, I propose to find my 
themes in undercurrent events, and my illustrations 
as Providence may send them floating along. 

Daily happenings can best be understood through 
a knowledge of human nature. The key to public 
problems is in the custody of private life. 

That is what I want to talk about, and that is 
why I invite consideration of the fortunes of the 
old-established, much-imperilled, indispensable firm 
of Self, Neighbor, and Company. 

I 

One of the chief things we have to do, on arrival 
in this strange world, is to make our own acquain- 
tance. The baby does not know himself at all when 
he begins life. He learns to know his food, his ball, 
his cradle, his mother, other members of the fam- 
ily, even the household cat, before he knows any- 
thing about himself. 

42 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

"The baby new to earth and sky. 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast. 
Has never thought that *this is I.' '* 

When he begins to talk he often shows this 
limitation in the manner of his speech. He does 
not say, "I am hungry," "I want so and so.*' He 
says "Billy hungry"; "Billy wants"; as if Billy 
were a simple force of nature. And this, in a cer- 
tain sense, is all that Billy is at that stage of his 
growth. 

But presently he becomes aware that behind 
these powers of seeing and hearing, there is some 
one who sees and hears. Behind these feelings of 
hunger and cold, there is some one who wants to be 
fed and warmed. Underneath all these services 
which his mother and other persons render to the 
baby, there is a little person whom they love and 
whom they wish to love them in return. That is a 
wonderful discovery. The baby becomes his own 
Christopher Columbus. He finds himself, — his me. 

Of course it is an unexplored continent, — ^bound- 
aries, climate, contents, all unknown. But it ex- 
ists. It is just as real as anything outside of it. 

He soon learns to distinguish this little person 
43 



CAMP-FIRES 

from exterior things, even from the house and the 
body in which he lives. He says "my foot, my 
hand, my head," claiming ownership, but knowing 
that neither foot nor hand nor head is himself. He 
discriminates among the people and other living 
creatures around him, — some friendly and some 
hostile. He begins to grasp, rather slowly, the dis- 
tinction between his own things and the things of 
others. He learns that the appetites and desires, 
which at first seemed irresistible powers of nature, 
are personal to himself and must be controlled in 
relation to the wants and needs of other persons 
around him, otherwise disagreeable consequences 
will ensue. He finds out not only that Billy is, but 
that Billy belongs. He exists, but not alone. He is 
part of a circle of life. Into this circle he must try 
to fit his new-found self, for joy or sorrow, for good 
or ill. 

It is from this double discovery, — the finding of 
himself, and the finding of his relation to things and 
to other persons, — that his whole growth as a man, 
a thinking, feeling, acting individual, must proceed. 
His schooling, his pleasures, his friendships, his oc- 
cupation, his citizenship, everything must be under 
the wing-and-wing impulse of these two facts: first, 
that Billy is; and second, that Billy belongs. 

44 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

If we have no real self, no thoughts, no feelings, 
no personality of our own, we are not persons at 
all. We are mere parts of a machine. 

If on the other hand we are ruled only by self- 
will, self-interest, we are sure to injure other peo- 
ple, and in the end to destroy our own happiness. 
We become objectionable members of the commu- 
nity, nuisances, if not criminals. 

The most difficult problem in the conduct of life 
is the harmonizing of these two principles, so that 
they will work together. 

Every one is born an individual, a self; and that 
self has the right (which is also a duty) to live and 
grow. 

Every one is likewise born a neighbor; with ties 
and obligations and duties which spread out on all 
sides. Which has the higher claim? Or are they 
equal ? 

In theory it is easy to find an answer sounding 
well enough. But in practice, when there are only 
two partners in the firm, they often come to a dead- 
lock and stand bickering in a grievous desperation 
betwixt the devil of Egoism and the deep sea of 
Altruism. 

Of the two, it must be admitted, the devil has 
the closer hold on us, but the deep sea is by far the 

45 



CAMP-FIRES 

cleaner and less treacherous. Yet I confess to a 
rooted distrust of all "isms." They imply a sur- 
render of something precious; they hint mutilation 
and bondage. 

Is there no way of breaking the deadlock, of 
reconciling the apparently conflicting interests and 
saving the firm? The only way that I can see is 
through the guidance and authority of the third 
partner, who is so much wiser and more fair than 
either of the others, to both of whom, indeed, he is 
bound by an equal love. To believe this and to act 
upon it is religion. 

Ordinarily, if we speak of religion at all, we use 
quiet tones and conventional words. But there are' 
times when the want of it haunts us like a passion, 
burns us hke a fever, pierces us to the marrow with 
unendurable cold. Out of some tragic clash of duty 
and desire; after some harromng vision of the wide- 
spread sujfferings of mankind, some poignant hear- 
ing of 

"the fierce confederate storm 
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
Within the walls of cities"; 

under some tense pressure of reproach, regret, and 
fear; out of our bewilderment and urgent need, we 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

would fain cry aloud, as a confused soul in mortal 
peril might shout for guidance and help. 

But the answer would come then, as it comes now, 
not in the whirlwind, the earthquake, or the fire, 
but in a voice of gentle stillness, saying, "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is balm 
of Gilead; oil and wine for the broken traveller on 
the Jericho Road; social wisdom from the fountain- 
head for the individual and for society. Here is the 
heavenly plan of the silent partner, to be worked 
out through all the world's experiments. Without 
this, none of them can succeed, be it never so an- 
gelic. With this, none but the devilish ones can 
utterly fail. 

II 

How then are we entitled and bound to love 
self ? That, of course, is the first question, for upon 
the answer to that depends the line of love which we 
must follow toward our neighbor. 

Said Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who 
will be for me ? But if I care for myself only, what 
am I ? And if not now, when ? " 

Everybody will agree that we must not have a 
foolish, fond, pampering, spoiling affection for our- 

47 



CAMP-FIRES 

selves. We ought not to indulge our own whims 
and passions, our sloth and selfishness. We ought 
to dislike and repress that which is evil and mean in 
us, and to cherish that which is good and generous. 
The only kind of love for ourselves which is per- 
missible must be wise and clean and careful; it must 
have justice in it as well as mercy; it must be capa- 
ble of discipline as well as of encouragement; it 
must strive to keep the soul above the body, and to 
develop both. 

Precisely thus, and not otherwise, we should love 
our neighbors: with a steady, sane, hberating and 
helpful love, which always seeks to bring out their 
best. 

We and they are bound up together in the bundle 
of Hfe. We cannot advance if they go backward. 
We cannot be truly happy if they abide in misery. 
We cannot be really saved if we make no effort to 
save them. We must withstand in them, just as in 
ourselves, the things that are evil and ought not to 
be loved. 

Religion does not tell us to love or to encourage 
our neighbors' faults: but to love them in spite of 
their faults and to do what we can to better them. 

True neighbor-love, then, will not be a weak, 
48 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

gelatinous, sentimental thing. It will have a con- 
science. It will be capable, on occasion, of friendly 
warning and reproof. It will even accept, if need be 
for the protection of ourselves and other neighbors, 
the duty of restraint or punishment. I may have a 
rowdy or a thief for a neighbor, but my love ought 
not to embrace rowdiness or thievery in him any 
more than in myself. The same thing is true of 
malice or envy or laziness or a slanderous tongue. 

But the trouble with us is that our self-reproach is 
commonly too soft and tender even to pierce the 
skin, while most of the reproof or restraint or pun- 
ishment which we give the neighbor is not really 
animated by love, but by malice, or jealousy, or 
contempt. That is why it so often fails. It must 
have good-will back of it and shining through it. 

If the people of a community who are thoroughly 
good in themselves would also be good for others, 
they would have power to lift up the whole tone of 
life and would be ten times more happy and more 
useful. 

Doing one's duty on the side of neighborhood 
leads to the best results on the side of personality. 

If a man concentrates his attention and affection 
and effort on himself, he is not doing the best, but 

49 



CAMP-FIRES 

the worst for himself. He is going to be a smooth, 
self-satisfied prig, or a sour old curmudgeon. Even 
if he has some kind of a theology it will not do him 
much good. It is sure to be as narrow and hollow 
as an empty razor-shell on the beach. 

According to the Bible, that kind of theology does 
not count with God. He cares more for sinners than 
for the self-righteous. But he cares most for the 
neighborly folks who try to do right. They are 
his salt of the earth. They are his lights in the 
world. 

Some Christians are Uke candles that have been 
lit once and then put away in a cupboard to be 
eaten up by mice. How much better to stay lit and 
keep on burning even till the candle is burned out, 
so long as it gives light ! 

There are plenty of us who love ourselves as if 
we were our own grandmothers. Whenever the 
little chap cries for more candy, or somebody else's 
doll, we let him have it. Dear httle fellow, he is so 
cunning I 

But the scriptural image of the divine love, which 
is to be our pattern, is not indulgent grandmother- 
hood but perfect fatherhood. Now a good father 
desires each of his children to grow up, to develop. 

50 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

He does not wish them all alike. But he wishes the 
whole family to have peace and happiness. He 
wants harmony from the different instruments. 

Equahty of condition is nowhere written in the 
Christian programme. In fact the parable of the 
talents implies a continuing state of inequality. 

Yet the real curse of the one-talent man is not the 
poverty of his portion, but the meanness and selfish- 
ness of his heart. He is a slacker, a shirker, a 
striker, a lock-out man, a parasite. His unused 
talent becomes a fungus. 

That the rich and the poor are likely to be with 
us as long as men differ in abiUty and industry, is 
clearly intimated in the Good Book as well as in 
the dry tables of political economy. But the Good 
Book adds a prediction of woe to the rich if they 
suffer the pride of wealth to divide them from the 
poor. 

"Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for 
your miseries that shall come upon you. Your 
riches are corrupted and your garments are moth- 
eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the 
rust of them shall be a witness against you, and 
shall eat your flesh as it were fire." 

Let the economist write this into his tables; it is 
51 



CAMP-FIRES 

essential to the correctness of his computations for 
this world as well as for the next. 

Outward equality of goods without the spirit of 
neighborliness is equivalent to an inward com- 
munity of evils. I cannot imagine a state more like 
hell, this side of Russia. Yet even in Russia the 
outward equality is a sham, a gross and palpable 
fraud. Who will assert so much as a decent sem- 
blance of parity between Lenine fattening in his 
stolen palace and Andreyef starving to death in 
exile? 

Charity is scorned and derided by the modem 
communist. He will none of it. But who can con- 
ceive a social order, framed of the present human 
stuff, in which kindness will not be desirable, neces- 
sary, and beautiful ? 

Kindness is more than mercy tempering justice. 
It is love thoughtless of reward. It is that godlike 
impulse which gives to others not barely what they 
have earned, but what they need. 

None of us can get through life without needing 
charity and longing for it; and there is much com- 
fort in the promise that if we show it on earth we 
shall find it in Heaven. 



52 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

Ill 

War, with its attendant horrors, seems like an 
outrage upon love. And so it is, in its origin and 
source. "From whence come wars and fightings 
among you? Come they not hence, even of your 
lusts that war in your members ? Ye lust and have 
not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain." 

Yet there is a war against war which is set in the 
very key of "Love thy neighbqr as thyself." It was 
to frustrate a gigantic crime and to redress villain- 
ous wrong that the Allies took up arms in the World 
War, and America at last joined them. Had her 
heart been quicker, her feet more swift, she might 
have reached the Jericho Road in time to stop the 
robbers before they began their cruel work. Who 
can tell? At least, having arrived, she did her best 
and beat them off. 

Great sacrifice, but far greater reward, came to 
America in the doing of that clear duty. Never 
were "we, the people of the United States," so 
thoroughly united as in that vast co-operation. 
Not only in mobilizing all our forces and resources 
for the urgent business of battle, but also in utiliz- 
ing all the powers of sympathy and help that rust 

53 



CAMP-FIRES 

unused in men, women, and children, for the Good 
Samaritan work of Red Cross and Relief Commis- 
sion, we learned what it means to be born a neighbor 
as well as a person. 

The self-sufficiency, not to say self-complacency, 
of the American temperament was absorbed and 
fused into something larger and better. For a while 
we ceased to satisfy ourselves with "paddle your 
own canoe," and took up the finer motto, "for the 
good of the ship." 

With all its trials, privations, and sorrows, — ^yes, 
even despite its individual exposures of greed and 
graft, — the war-time was a time of elevation and 
enlargement of spirit for the people of America. 

Why not carry these benefits of a just war well 
won, with us into the time of peace ? Why not keep 
the lesson learned at such a cost ? No man, no com- 
munity, no nation Hveth to self alone. 

Joubert has well said: "To wish to do without 
other men and to be under obligation to no one, is a 
sure mark of a mind devoid of feeling." To this I 
would add: A mind devoid of feeling never reasons 
right in the affairs of life, because feeling is a vital 
element of sound reasoning. 



54 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

IV 

Two philosophies have long contended for the 
control of thought. One is called Individualism, 
because it lays the emphasis upon the single person, 
his rights, privileges, liberties, happiness. The 
other is called Socialism, because it lays the em- 
phasis on the community. The partisans of these 
two theories fight each other furiously. 

It seems to me that both theories are wrong, when 
they are interpreted exclusively and with damna- 
tory clauses. Each has a ray of truth in it when it 
takes account of the other. 

The most perfect type of individualism is the 
"rogue" elephant, — solitary, predatory, miserable, — 
a torment to himself and a terror to others. 

The most perfect example of pure socialism is a 
swarm of bees, where personality is nil, every mem- 
ber gets the same pay, — board and lodging, — and 
the only object is to perpetuate the swarm and keep 
the hive full. 

But without the aid of man they never produce a 
better bee or a more perfect hive. Is humanity to 
come down to that level ? 

The Talmud speaks scorn of a world where "one 
55 



CAMP-FIRES 

man eats and another says grace." Is it much 
better than a world where everybody gorges and 
nobody says grace? 

I can see no reason, either in morals or in re- 
ligion, for the perpetuation of the human swarm, 
except for the development and perfecting of the 
human souls who make mankind. What real good 
appears in the mere continuance of any commimity, 
say New York or Nyack, unless you think of the 
men and women and children who live there, each 
one the inheritor of a spark of the Divine Life, 
which may be cherished and enlarged into a flame 
of beautiful and potent light? There is your rea- 
son for sacrifice. There is your reason for service. 
The community has a claim to live for the sake of 
the better men and women who are going to live in 
it and make it better. 

So then, amid the confusion at the present cross- 
roads where the counsels of the many are so loud 
and divergent, we find a little neglected guide-post. 
Look, 'tis so old and weather-beaten that some of 
the letters are worn away; yet the sense of it is still 
legible: 

LOVE—NEIGHBOR— SELF 
56 



SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 

It reads like a general order. 

Suppose we should try one of these roads marked 
"Government Ownership" or "Collective Bargain- 
ing" or "High Productiveness" or "Independence 
of Employers" or "Control by Employees," and 
find that it was leading us away from our objective. 
Might not the order nerve us to turn back? 

Or, if the road seemed to be a right one, evidently 
bringing us nearer to our objective, wouldn't the 
order encourage us to carry on, and cheer us through 
the hardships of the way? 

Let no one imagine that it will be easy. A gen- 
eral order is far more difficult to follow than a 
definite programme. Most men prefer a concrete 
dose of medicine, however bitter, to a long course 
of hygienic Hving. 

To live up to a principle is harder than to obey a 
rule. But just for that reason it may be better. 

Let us try it. Self and Neighbor, try it more 
seriously than we have yet done. The drop of 
good- will in all our experiments! The touch of 
kindness in all our efforts ! The purpose of benefi- 
cence in all our plans ! For a year, a month, even 
a week, — do you think we can do it ? 

You are my partner, and I am yours. But to tell 
57 



CAMP-FIRES 

the truth, between us we have small capital and less 
experience. To carry out this enterprise we shall 
need the help of our third partner,— the divine 
silent one who knows all. 



58 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

Being by conviction as well as by profession an 
adherent of the creed of good-will and an advocate 
of universal charity, I am not a little chagrined to 
discover, (and hereby confess,) the considerable 
part which distastes and antipathies play in my 
life. 

My likings are strong enough to give assurance 
of health. The charms of a wooded mountain coun- 
try and swift-flowing streams; American elm-trees, 
white pines, and silver birches; the taste of fresh 
asparagus, green peppers, and bacon; the company 
of frank, lively, sensible, and unenvious people; the 
reading of books well written on subjects worth 
writing about; — to all these and many other attrac- 
tions I am open and pliable, without much reason- 
ing or moral suasion. 

On the other hand my dislikings, though less 
numerous, are quite as strong. A flat, bald country, 
dry or damp; dumplings, veal, and salt codfish; a 
clay soil; a lymphatic temperament in a woman, and 
a sour, jealous disposition in a man; books about 

59 



CAMP-FIRES 

nothing, written in a sloppy or pretentious style— 
these are things that I cannot abide. 

Nor am I greatly concerned to justify such-like 
repugnancies by abstract reasoning or high ethical 
or political considerations. They belong to the 
sphere of personal privilege. Without some ad- 
mixture of this kind, temperamental rather than 
logical, we can hardly maintain our existence as real 
individuals. Mankind, thus denatured, would be 
reduced to the dreary stratifications of class-con- 
sciousness. Given the label of his church, or political 
party, or handicraft, or profession, you could pre- 
dict precisely what your quasi-man would be and 
do. The more eminent in his type, the more sapless 
and savorless would he be in his person. He would 
resemble that modern statue which Julius Hare de- 
scribes in "Guesses at Truth": "Like the yolk of 
an egg cased in the soft albumen of a pseudo-ideal." 

A man refined or sublimated beyond a capacity 
for simple, natural dislikes is distinctly not a lik- 
able character. Beneath the glossy surface of a 
superior neutrality in minor things, he may hide a 
major hatred, a fixed, unalterable enmity, irrational 
as the jaundice and implacable as a vendetta. 

Give me rather the man of frank though foolish 
60 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

aversions; the man who protests that he knows 
nothing about art but is quite sure of what he does 
not Hke, and declines to be bothered with it; the 
man who has no better cause to give for his repug- 
nancy to So-and-So than that his mouth is cut the 
wrong way, or that he talks through his nose and 
pronounces "programme" to rhyme with "po- 
grom." These are pardonable prejudices. They are 
to be placed in the necessary, non-moral region of 
human life. They belong to the domain of unac- 
countable reactions, covered by the classic quat- 
rain, — 

"I do not love thee. Doctor Fell, 
The reason why I cannot tell; 
But this alone I know full well, 
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell." 

Now, the subject of these famous lines was an 
eminently respectable scholar and prelate, dean of 
Christ Church, and afterward Bishop of Oxford, in 
the seventeenth century. The author of the lines 
was one Tom Brown, a student at Christ Church, 
and a vagarious fellow whom Addison character- 
ized as "of Facetious Memory." Yet I am prepared 
to defend the irregular Tom Brown in his confession 
that he disliked the established John Fell without as- 

61 



CAMP-FIRES 

signable reasons. At all events, but for this whim- 
sical antipathy the name of Doctor Fell would never 
have become a household word. So far, it benefited 
him. But what it did to handicap Tom Brown's 
academic career, we know not. 

It must be admitted, for candor's sake, that these 
unreasoned dishkes are not generally profitable in 
the affairs of life. They act as restraints and in- 
hibitions: whether wise or not, God alone knoweth 
that alloweth them. 

I recall that my father, (of blessed memory,) 
had an aversion from an unknown man whom he 
used to meet and pass in his morning walks in the 
city of Brooklyn, going at a certain hour through 
Remsen Street from his house to his study in the 
church which he served. This man he pointed out 
to me once as we walked together. He was quite 
an ordinary citizen, tailor-made, glum-faced, sour- 
looking, with a white patch over one eye, and of a 
general scorbutic appearance, unpleasant but not 
terrifying. Yet my father felt so strong a detesta- 
tion for the mere look of the man, that he regarded 
it as ominous and malign, and fell into the habit of 
walking around by way of Montague Street, rather 
than risk meeting his bete noire in Remsen Street. 

62 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

It was absurd no doubt, but not reprehensible; and 
it had one good result, — a little longer exercise for 
my father in the fresh air every morning. 

My own dislikings have often demanded pay- 
ment for their indulgence. What shall a man who 
abhors veal, and believes that if he eats it he will 
presently faint away and perhaps die of acute indi- 
gestion, — what shall such a man do at the tables- 
d'hote of Europe.'* He must practise vegetarianism, 
or bribe the waiter to procure a substitute for the 
unleavened Kalbfleisch. 

My absolute inability to love flat and treeless 
countries, my positive aversion from sage-brush 
and alkali, have prevented me from sharing the 
eloquent affection of my Cousin John for The Desert. 
He may have it all if he likes. Also he may have 
the paintings of Matisse, and the plays of the very 
Belgian Shakespeare, Maeterlinck, and the anthol- 
ogies of Spoon River and other level and bald 
localities, if they please him. To me they are as 
veal, and clay, and salt codfish. Je m'en fiche. 
Poorer this abstinence may make me, but it leaves 
me honest. And it does not deprive me of the 
pleasure of admiring the gusto, (to use Hazlitt*s 
word,) with which my Cousin John praises the desert 

63 



CAMP-FIRES 

and finds excuse for its lack of eyebrows and eye- 
lashes in the wondrous lights reflected in its ever- 
open eyes. By proxy I enjoy it through his enjoy- 
ment. 

'*But not for all his faith can see. 
Would I that desert-dweller be.'* 

Here we approach, by a devious but necessary 
detour, the particular subject of this paper. Dis- 
likes, aversions, repugnancies, are inevitable, and 
therefore to a certain extent defensible. But only 
those are wholesome and profitable which have 
in them a little ray of comprehension, a little drop 
of love. 

Trust not your antipathies unless they are sym- 
I)athetic. 

Do you remember how Charles Lamb begins 
his essay on "All Fools' Day"? 

"The compliments of the season to my worthy 
masters, and a merry first of April to us all!'' 

How often, if we have the priceless art of being 
sincere with ourselves, do we recognize in the quali- 
ties which displease us in others, the very imps and 
unruly sprites which cause the most trouble in our 
own interior economy ! At home we are inclined 
64 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

to go gently with them, to make allowances, even 
to plead excuse for our bothersome offspring. And 
who shall say that this is altogether wrong or ab- 
solutely unwise ? Many a vice is but a virtue over- 
driven. Pruning is better than extermination. 

But why not apply the same principle to what 
we see in our neighbor's back garden, or in his front 
yard? Why not remember that he probably has 
as much trouble with his faults and foibles as we 
have with our own ? And if they happen to be alike, 
why not use them for self -enlightenment and cor- 
rection ? 

The things that we dislike in others may serve 
as mirrors to ourselves. But let us not follow the 
example of that foolish person described in the 
Epistle of St. James, who "beholding his natural 
face in a glass, goeth his way and straightway f or- 
getteth what manner of man he was." 

Take that tendency to quick and fierce anger 
which the Romans called iracundia, and in later 
Latin stomachatio, as if it were a sudden rising of 
the gorge. We call it irascibility. It is not a lov- 
able quality. Yet those of us who are afflicted with 
it would not really admit that it is only and alto- 
gether evil. We would plead the excuses of right- 

65 



CAMP-FIRES 

eous wrath; we would claim that good fuel answers 
quickly to the flame; we would say, as if it were a 
complete justification, "you knew I had a hasty 
tempyer; why did you provoke me?" 

Suppose we should apply to others the same argu- 
ments and palliations that we use for ourselves. 
Suppose that the great quarrel of to-day between 
two irascible men, in which the interests of all na- 
tions and of many millions of mankind are involved, 
should have its natural antipathies loosened and 
resolved by the infusion of a good-humored drop 
of sympathy. Would it not have a happy effect .^^ 

I like the advice of Plutarch in the third volume 
of his "Morals," where he says, "Should you quarrel 
with your brother, avoid intercourse with his enemies^ 
and hold correspondence with his friends." 

This seems to be a practical comment on the 
words of St. Paul, wherein we find both a reasonable 
concession to the infirmity of our human tempers 
and a Christian counsel for controlling them. "Be 
ye angry," says he, quite positively, as if we could 
not help it, "and sin not. Let not the sun go down 
upon your wrath." 

Anger that breaks out is troublesome. Anger 
that sinks in is fatal. 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

A well-founded mistrust of treacherous persons 
we may keep. But God save us from the poison 
of a cherished grudge. 

Consider in Hke manner, the foible of vanity. 
Nothing is more apt to evoke antipathy, especially 
in those who are tinctured with the same fault. 

The arrival of a person with a too manifest good 
opinion of himself in a small community where con- 
ceit is endemic, seems like a direct challenge to all 
the legitimate inheritors of self-complacency. It 
becomes their pleasure as well as their duty to meet 
the emergency and to rescue their neighbor from 
his annoying sin. 

Sometimes they go about it with open ridicule, 
which is wholesome and harmless enough, if it be 
free from malice. At other times a kind of League 
to Enforce Humility is silently formed and every- 
body is proud to have a modest part in its work. 

The best leader in such a campaign of levelling 
improvement is usually a female who has passed 
middle age in unquestioned respectabihty and has 
established a local reputation for mordant wit. 
Being cased in the defensive armor of self-satis- 
faction, she is the more free to let fly at random 
with her sharp-pointed tongue. 

67 



CAMP-FIRES 

An aged dame of this type I once knew, who was 
a terror to the fresh and exuberant, and a perpetual 
joy to herself. She was a past mistress in the art 
of making people feel uncomfortable when she 
thought they needed it. For those who crossed 
her path in the flush of a first success or in the glow 
of some long task finally accomplished, she had 
the vigilant eye of a sleepless monitor, and the swift, 
unerring weapon of a winged and barbed word. 
After such a discharge you could see her fluffing 
her feathers and preening herself like a hen who has 
just performed the miracle of laying an egg. "Aha," 
she seemed to say, "did you watch me do that? 
How neatly I brought that cockscomb down ! Van- 
ity is a thing that I cannot endure." 

One is reminded of the great word which George 
Meredith, in "The Egoist," makes Sir Willoughby 
Patteme utter to Clara, his hapless fiancee: "Be- 
ware of marrying an Egoist, my dear ! " 

An English rhymer has a verse on this subject: 

The hunters of Conceit pursue a fox 
Endowed with magic that deludes and mocks; 
He doubles, turns, and ere they end the race. 
Each dog that follows wears a foxy face; 
The scent they ran by on themselves is found. 
And now they chase each other round and round. 
68 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

The wisest and most amiable of mankind are al- 
ways aware of this subtle and tricksy quality of 
conceit, which masquerades in our Sunday clothes 
and peeps out at us from our own photographs. 
Doth not Michel de Montaigne, after humbly ac- 
knowledging that he has no memory, mollify that 
self -accusation by remarking that "it is commonly 
scene by experience that excellent memories do 
rather accompany weake judgements**? Bravo, 
intrepid philosopher of Perigord and writer of the 
most frankly ingenuous essays ever penned ! Why 
should we take umbrage at your further confes- 
sion? "Glorie and curiositie are the scourges of 
our soules. The one induceth us to have an oare 
in every ship, and the other forbiddeth us to leave 
anything unresolved or undecided.** 

Listen also to a more reverend doctor, Blaise 
Pascal, of Paris and Port Royal. " We toil without 
ceasing," says he, "to adorn and to uphold our 
imaginary self, while we neglect our true self alto- 
gether. We would gladly act as poltroons to ac- 
quire the reputation of being brave. Those who 
write against glory would fain have the glory of 
having written well. Those who read them would 
fain have the glory of having read. And /, who am 

69 



CAMP-FIRES 

writing this, perhaps I also have the same desire. 
And you, who read, perhaps you will have it also. 
Curiosity is nothing but vanity. Generally one 
wishes to know merely in order to talk about it." 

This is an admirable, thoroughgoing discourse, 
wherein the preacher includes himself with the con- 
gregation, and admits, smiling, that humor is not 
out of place in a serious sermon. 

Come from behind your pillar, brother Humilio ! 
Seek not to evade your spoonful of the medicine. 
Come out, and let us all laugh together and repent 
and try to mend our ways. 

'Tis no new discovery, this streak of vainglory 
running all through the stuff of our humanity. 
Plutarch lets in the light upon it when he notes that 
those who praise an obscure life seek to win fame by 
their praise of it. He compares them to watermen 
"who look astern while they row the boat ahead, 
still so managing the strokes of the oar that the 
vessel may make on to its port." A few paragraphs 
later, he goes even beyond this and praises outright 
the men who seek honor and good repute. "Would 
you have them out of the way," he asks ironically, 
"for fear they should set others a good example, 
and allure others to virtue out of emulation of the 
precedent ? " 

70 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

Undoubtedly there is a popular antipathy to 
those who evidently aim at eminence. Paul Elmer 
More? in one of his delightful Shelburne essays, de- 
scribes it as a lurking malady of the democratic 
spirit, "a kind of malaise at distinction, wherever 
seen and however manifested." 

Against this I think we should be on our guard 
and protect ourselves by whatever prophylactic we 
can find, just as carefully as against the far more 
open fault of vanity. Indeed this uneasy resent- 
ment at excellence is a covert form of vanity, — 
vanitas wlgi, which cries with the Irishman "One 
man is as good as another, and better too ! Down 
wid all top-hats ! " 

It is to this ingrowing self -flattery of democracies 
rather than to the so-called ingratitude of republics 
that I would ascribe much of the niggling detrac-^ 
tion that has followed many great men in our coun- 
try. First, a brilliant burst of applause; then a 
steady rain of abuse; then, (after the man is dead,) a 
clearing sky and a worthy monument. 

Washington, who liberated the coimtry, was ac- 
cused of truckKng to the British and tyrannizing 
over the Americans. Lincoln, who preserved the 
Union, was accused of currying favor with the 
South because he declined to "hang JeJGP Davis to a 

71 



CAMP-FIRES 

sour apple-tree," or perform other vengeful antics 
at the bidding of the Yankee irreconcilables. Roose- 
velt, who preached and practised Americanism on 
a four-square basis, was called a "grand-stand 
player," because he evidently relished the plaudits 
which followed a brave speech or a good stroke. 
And now Woodrow Wilson is accused of the same 
heinous crime of grand-stand play because he has 
plainly sought the honor of promoting the largest 
plan to defend peace on earth that the world has 
ever seen. Would that some of those who gibe and 
fleer at him might betray in themselves a like am- 
bition, an equal willingness to toil, to put aside ease 
and comfort, to imperil health and life itself for the 
sake of realizing an ideal whose nobility and gener- 
ous daring none can deny. 

Grand-stand players, forsooth ! Then so was 
Nelson a grand-stand player when he cried at Cape 
St. Vincent "Westminster Abbey or Victory." So 
was William of Orange when he aimed to win, and 
won, from all his people the more than kingly title 
of "Father." So was Themistocles, the savior of 
Athens, when he plainly took delight in the applause 
of the stadium, and showed himself philotimotatos, a 
lover of honor. So has every true hero and notable 

72 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

benefactor been of the company of those who labor 
to deserve, and are not ashamed to enjoy, the ap- 
proval of their fellow men, if it come on the path of 
duty and in obedience to the divine command. By 
such renown their power for good is increased, and 
the radiance of their example is shed abroad likf^ 
the light of a candle set on a high place. 

Therefore I would not be among the detractors of 
the great or the minifiers of the illustrious. But 
the same trouble and toil which those criticasters 
give themselves to bedim good names and find or 
paint blots on fair *scutcheons, would I gladly take 
to brighten the shield of virtue, to find the most 
favorable interpretation of the errors of the wise, 
and to discover new reasons for the admiration of 
the excellent. Well spoke Jesus the son of Sirach 
when he said: "Let us now praise famous men, and 
our fathers that begat us; leaders of the people by 
their counsels, and by their understanding men of 
learning for the people; all these were honored 
in their generations, and were a glory in their 
I days." 

But from these heights let us return to the case of 
Themistocles. It offers an amusing illustration of 
the vagaries of vanity in human nature. It appears 

73 



CAMP-FIRES 

that when the battle of Salamis had been gloriously 
won under his leadership, a council was held to 
award the supreme prize of valor. Every general 
present voted for himself as FIRST in valor; but 
all voted for Themistocles as SECOND. So the 
prize was given to him. And I imagine that it was 
done with general laughter and good humor. 

In fact, the only kind of vanity in ourselves that 
is dangerous is that which cannot endure to be 
laughed at. And the only kind of vanity in others 
that is intolerable is that which denies itself to 
friendly callers, assumes an alias, and puts on the 
ragged cloak and broken sandals of a mock humil- 
ity. All other kinds are tolerable; and if we are 
honest and mindful of our own infirmity, we can but 
feel toward them a sympathetic antipathy. 

There are many other common faults and fail- 
ings besides vanity, which we dislike in our neigh- 
bors and for which we may find some explanation, 
if not excuse, if we will but look more closely into 
ourselves. 

Does Grandioso exaggerate ? Truly, it is a griev- 
ous habit. But have not you, dear Piscator, an in- 
clination to round out your fish-stories with an 
extra pound? You do it for the pleasure of your 

74 



SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 

hearers, of course, but will you not allow the same 
palliation to your friend ? 

Dogmatism is antipathetic to most men. Yet 
there is hardly one of us who will not "lay down the 
law" when he gets on his favorite subject. So much 
the better, if we avoid sentences and penalties for 
unbelief. 

To tell you of all the things to which my antip- 
athies are sympathetic would be too long a tale. 
It would amount to a last confession and a judg- 
ment-day account. It would not interest you. The 
camp-fire of this night burns low. Before it goes out, 
let us turn back to our most common failing and 
universal antipathy, vanity, and see if we can find 
a little guide-post on the way out. 

For the mitigation and restraint of conceit, when 
it becomes acute (either in its gratified or its un- 
gratified form), there is no better remedy than to 
frequent the company of Httle people to whom your 
occupation and your achievements (or failures) are 
unknown. Elsewhere you may find heating flattery, 
or freezing contempt. But here you may forget 
your wounds and cool your fever in that fresh and 
impartial air which belongs to the society of young 
children. If the little ones see you sad, they will 

75 



CAMP-FIRES 

give you a glance of sorrow, they know not why, and 
then demand a new story. If they see you glad, 
they will rejoice with you, they know not why, and 
then call you to their merriest play. It is helpful to 
get away from yourself. 

Let the writer forsake his Poetry Societies and 
Authors' Leagues, and go into the woods where 
the lumbermen and guides and hunters have never 
heard of his books, and yet manage to live with 
some joy. Let the captain of industry or finance 
take a little voyage among the fishermen who know 
nothing of his triumphs or defeats on the Exchange. 
Let the professor find friends among farmers or 
commercial travellers who ignore the difference be- 
tween Q.E.D. and Ph.D. Let the artist forsake the 
academy or Greenwich Village for some region where 
his shibboleth is never spoken because it cannot be 
pronounced. 

And the politician, — where shall he go, in this 
age of democracy ? Merciful heaven, I know not, — 
unless it be to a Trappist monastery ,^ — or, better 
still, among the little children, who are too young to 
have votes and too wise to seek offices. 



76 



VI 

PUBLICOMANIA 

It is a strange thing to see how deeply certain 
people of our time have been smitten with a form 
of insanity which we may call, for want of a dic- 
tionary word, publicomania. The name is ratheF 
ugly, and altogether irregular, being of mixed Latin 
and Greek descent. But it is no worse than the 
thing it describes, which is, in fact, a sort of mongrel 
madness. It has some kinship with the Roman 
Grandio's passion for celebrity which Seneca sati- 
rized, and not a little likeness to the petty ostenta- 
tion of Beau Tibbs at which Goldsmith laughed 
kindly in London a century ago. 

But in our own day the disease has developed 
a new symptom. It is not enough to be pointed 
out with the forefinger of notoriety: the finger 
which points must be stained with printer's ink. 
The craving for publicity is not satisfied with any- 
thing but a paragraph in the newspapers; then it 
wants a column; and finally it demands a whole 
page with illustrations. The delusion consists ia 

77 



CAMP-FIRES 

the idea that a sufficient quantity of this kind of 
jiotoriety amounts to fame. 

It is astonishing to observe how much time, in- 
genuity, money, and vital energy, people who are 
otherwise quite sane, will spend for the sake of hav- 
ing their names and unimportant doings chronicled, 
in a form of print which can be preserved only in 
private and very inconvenient scrap-books. In 
England, where they have a hereditary aristocracy 
and a Court Journal, the mania seems less difficult 
to understand. But in this country, where the 
limits of the "smart set" are confessedly imdefined 
and indefinable, changing with the fluctuations of 
the stock-market and the rise and fall of real estate, 
it is impossible to conceive what benefit or satis- 
faction reasonable beings can derive from a tem- 
porary enrolment among the assistants at fashion- 
able weddings, the guests at luxurious banquets, or 
the mourners at magnificent funerals. 

Our wonder increases when we consider that 
there is hardly a detail of private life, from the cradle 
to the grave, which is not now regarded as appropri- 
ate for pubHcation, provided only the newspapers 
are induced to take an interest in it. The interest 
of the pubUc is taken for granted. Formerly the 

78 



PUBLICOMANIA 

intrusion of reporters into such affairs was resented. 
Now it is their occasional neglect to intrude which 
causes chagrin. 

If we could suppose that all this was only a subtle 
and highly refined mode of advertisement, it would 
be comparatively easy to account for it. There 
would be method in the madness. But why in the 
world should a man or a woman care to advertise 
things which are not to be sold — a wedding trous- 
seau, the decorations of a bedroom, a dinner to 
friends, or the flowers which conceal a coffin? We 
can see well enough why a dealer in old silver should 
be pleased at having his wares described in the news- 
papers. But what interest has Mr. Newman Biggs 
in having the public made aware of the splendor 
and solidity of his plate ? 

Of course one must recognize that there is such 
a thing as public life. It is natural and reasonable 
that those who are engaged in it should accept pub- 
licity, and even seek it within proper limits, so far 
as it may be a necessary condition of success in 
their work. Authors and artists wish to have their 
books read and their pictures looked at. States- 
men and reformers desire to have their policies 
and principles discussed. Benefactors of mankind 

79 



CAMP-FIRES 

wish at least to have their schools and hospitals 
and libraries received with as much atteation as 
may be needed to make them useful. 

But why the people who are chiefly occupied in 
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in mar- 
riage, should wish to have their lives turned inside 
out on the news-stands passes comprehension. They 
subject themselves to all the inconveniences of 
royalty (being, as Montaigne says, "in all the daily 
actions of life encircled and hemmed in by an im- 
portunate and tedious multitude")? without any of 
its compensations. They are exposed by their own 
fantastic choice to what Cowley called "a quotidian 
ague of frigid impertinences," and they get nothing 
for it but the disadvantage of being talked about. 
The result of their labors and sufferings is simply 
to bring them to the condition of a certain Doctor 
William Kenrick, of whom old Samuel Johnson said, 
**Sir, he is one of those who have made themselves 
public without making themselves known." 

But if we are inclined to be scornful of the vagaries 
of publicomania, this feeling must surely be softened 
into something milder and more humane when we 
reflect upon the unhappy state of mind to which it 
reduces those who are afflicted with it. They are 

80 



PUBLICOMANIA 

not as other men, to whom life is sweet for its own 
sake. The feasts to which they are bidden leave 
them hungry unless their presence is recorded in 
the Daily Eavesdropper, They are restless in their 
summer rest unless their comings and goings are 
printed in the chronicle of fashionable intelligence. 
Their new houses do not please them if the news- 
paper fails to give sufficient space to the announce- 
ment that they are "at home," It is a miserable 
condition, and one from w hich all obscure and happy 
persons should pray to be delivered. 

There is, however, consolation for true lovers of 
humanity in the thought that the number of people 
who are afflicted with this insanity in an incurable 
form is comparatively small. They make a great 
noise, like Edmund Burke's company of vociferous 
grasshoppers under a leaf in the field where a hun- 
dred cattle are quietly feeding; but, after all, the 
great silent classes are in the majority. The com- 
mon sense of mankind agrees with the poet Horace 
in his praise of the joys of retirement: 

*'Secretum iter, etfaUetitis semita tnUe.'* 

j One of the best antidotes and cures of the craze 
I for publicity is a love of poetry and of the things 

81 



CAMP-FIRES 

{ that belong to poetry — ^the beauty of nature, the 
sweetness and splendor of the common human af- 
fections, and those high thoughts and unselfish 
aspirations which are the enduring treasures of the 
soul. 

It is good to remember that the finest and most 
beautiful things that can ever come to us cannot 
possibly be news to the public. It is good to find 
the zest of life in that part of it which does not need, 
and will not bear, to be advertised. It is good to 
talk with our friends, knowing that they will not 
report us; and to play with the children, knowing 
that no one is looking at us; and to eat our meat 
with gladness and singleness of heart. It is good 
to recognize that the object of all true civiKzation 
is that a man's house, rich or poor, shall be his castle, 
and not his dime museum. It is good to enter into 
the spirit of Wordsworth's noble sonnet, and, turn- 
ing back to "the good old cause," thank God for 
those safeguards of the private life which still pre- 
serve in many homes 

"Our peace, our fearful innocence. 
And pure religion breathing household laws.'* 



82 



VII 

MOVING DAY 

IjONG ago in Brooklyn, — in the consulship of 
Plancus, when Fernando Wood was Tammany 
Mayor of New York, and the irrepressible effer- 
vescence of the Fenians bubbled over in antidraft 
riots,— in that rolled-golden age. May Day was 
"Moving Day." 

Beautiful Brooklyn, with breezy Heights over- 
looking the turbulent tides of East River, and the 
round green patch of Governor's Island, and the 
long low metropolis of Manhattan, and the hills 
of New Jersey and Staten Island beyond the busy 
harbor! What a broad and noble outlook, what 
a rural self-complacent charm was thine, O city 
of churches, "all unravaged by the fierce intellec- 
tual life of the century," wrapped in New England 
traditions and based on a solid Dutch financial 
foundation! 

Beecher and Storrs were thine, Jachin and Boaz, 
pillars of the oratorical Temple, — and. Lord, how 
they hated each other ! Walt Whitman also was 
thine, the insurgent rhapsodical poet, — ^but thou 



CAMP-FIRES 

knewest him not because he was flannel-shirted. 
Placid and prim were thy streets, and thy spirit 
was self-contented, sure that the ultimate truth 
and the final social form were embodied in Brooklyn. 

(Reader, I am afraid that these paragraphs, if 
you follow the punctuation, may seem like un- 
capitalized vers libre. Let us get back to honest 
prose.) 

May the first, in the days which I recall, was 
the time appointed for the migration of households. 

It was not a movable feast, it was a fixed feast 
of movables. 

The little houses poured forth their accumulated 
treasures and rubbish to be conveyed to other little 
houses. "Apartments" were unknown, but tene- 
ments had begun to exist. Neither the origin nor 
the destination made any difference. The point 
was that you had to move if your lease was up; 
and your goods and chattels had to move with you. 

Great was the disclosure, on that day, of the stuff 
that had been accumulated. The discreet, gigantic 
moving-van had not yet been invented. Every- 
thing must be carried in more or less open carts 
and wagons. The ramshackle, the unnecessary, 
the futile, in the household gear, was inevitably 

84 



MOVING DAY 

betrayed. Moving Day was more or less a day 
of confession and repentance. 

Even solid and useful articles of furniture, — sofas 
of age if not of antiquity, armchairs and rockers, 
centre-tables and dinner-tables, double bedsteads 
and writing-desks, — ^have a forlorn, disreputable air 
when they are turned upside down. Their legs 
project helplessly. They look inebriate. Their 
accustomed use, the dignity of their position, the 
softening and concealing aid of lambrequins and 
portieres, antimacassars and footstools, fringed 
lamp-shades and mantel ornaments, — all the para- 
phernalia of their domestic state are stripped away 
from them. In the language of the prophets, "their 
nakedness is uncovered." The broken leg, the 
cracked foot-board, the scratched surface, the worn 
covering, the huge rent and the broken spring under- 
neath the corner of the parlor sofa, — ^all are bared 
to the cold light of day and the unsympathetic com- 
ment of the casual passer-by. 

Worst of all is the state of the enormous, un- 
wieldy, beloved, square piano. For this, usually, 
a separate dray and special movers are necessary, — 
men of rugged aspect and profane speech, men who 
"have no music in their souls," who care not for 

85 



CAMP-FIRES 

the sweet harmonies evoked from that gigantic 
rosewood box when Amelia played "The Wakening 
of the Lion," or "The Maiden's Prayer," or 
" Juanita," and eager swains stood near her to turn 
the leaves. The melodious monster now lies prone 
like a stricken hippopotamus: its huge carved and 
convoluted legs are dismembered. Beside it in the 
dray reposes its faithful little satellite, the piano- 
stool, with feet uplifted as if in mute appeal. 

Among the disjecta membra were manv things 
that in later times will rarely be seen, unless a place 
is foimd for them in the museums of antiquity where 
spinning-wheels and warming-pans are assembled. 
There were the long tin bathtubs, painted green 
without and white within, and their little round 
brothers, the foot-tubs of like complexion. There 
were enclosed wash-stands, with cupboards beneath, 
where articles of domestic virtue could be concealed, 
and with rods above, on which embroidered 
"splashers" portraying one-legged storks could be 
displayed. There were portentous parlor-lamps 
on lofty brass pedestals, and curious candelabra 
adorned with prismatic glass pendants. All these, 
and other things of like nature, modern plumbing 
and gas-fitting and electric wiring have consigned 

86 



MOVING DAY 

to the species of creatures extinct or soon to be ex- 
tinguished. But for the time being they had their 
place with the fearfully and wonderfully made 
"chromos," and the Rogers clay-statuettes, and 
the red-plush family albums, — among the impedi- 
menta which the mid- Victorian household chose 
to encumber itself on the pilgrimage of life. 

Moving Day brought them all out. To us chil- 
dren, when it struck our own family, it was a time 
of excitement, and of apprehension lest our own 
particular treasurable rubbish should be forgotten 
or broken. But when it struck other families, we 
found it a time of curiosity and amusement. We 
never thought of questioning its reason or its neces- 
sity. To us it seemed like something between a 
joke and a law of nature. 

Since then I have tried to discover, in a mildly 
historical spirit, the connection between this feast 
of movables and the first day of May, — a point of 
time more naturally associated with outdoor sports 
and pastimes in the joyousness of returning spring. 

The dull, obvious, logical answer to these in- 
quiries would be that since leases were made and 
expired "as of May first,'* that was inevitably the 
day to move if the lease was not renewed. But 

87 



CAMP-FIRES 

the deeper question still remains: why did the leases 
fix thai day ? 

Washington Irving, in his "Knickerbocker His- 
tory of New York," professes to give an exact his- 
torical explanation. It was on the first of May, 
says he, that the original Dutch settlers of the New 
Netherlands removed from their first establish- 
ment on the marshy lands of Communipaw, west 
of the Hudson, to the more salubrious and pleasant 
island of Mannahatta. 

"Houses were turned inside out, and stripped of 
all the venerable furniture which had come from 
Holland. . . . By degrees a fleet of boats and 
canoes were piled up with all kinds of household 
articles; ponderous tables; chests of drawers re- 
splendent with brass ornaments; quaint corner 
cupboards; beds and bedsteads; with any quantity 
of pots, kettles, frying-pans and Dutch ovens. In 
each boat embarked a whole family, from the ro- 
bustious burgher down to the cats and dogs and 
little negroes. . . . This memorable migration took 
place on the first of May, and was long cited in 
tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of 
it was piously observed among the 'sons of the Pil- 
grims of Communipaw,' by turning their houses 

88 



MOVING DAY 

topsyturvy and carrying all the furniture through 
the streets, in emblem of the swarming of the parent 
hive; and this is the real origin of the universal 
agitation and 'moving' by which this most rest- 
less of cities is literally turned out of doors on every 
May-day." 

Graphic and humorous explanation! But Pro- 
fessor Scheie de Vere, of the University of Virginia, 
who quoted it in his very entertaining book "Amer- 
icanisms'* (1871), was not entirely satisfied with it. 
"The custom," says he, "is older than the ancient 
settlement called Communipaw. The Dutch settlers 
evidently brought it with them from their trans- 
atlantic home, and to this day, in Bruges and its 
neighborhood, in Verviers and many other parts 
of Belgium and Holland, the first of May continues 
to be the general day of moving." 

No doubt the professor was right. I have seen 
something of the kind quite recently in the Dutch 
cities. And no doubt when this essay has been 
printed and read in various regions, letters will 
come, (to my delight,) from friendly correspondents, 
pointing out that the custom of Moving Day was 
not confined to the districts around New York, 
and that it is altogether too narrow to ascribe it 

89 



CAMP-FIRES 

to a purely Netherlandish origin. Right you are, 
friend. Granted beforehand! The origin lies in 
the universal heart of humanity, and in the laws 
of nature. 

Man is a mover. Spring is the time when he 
feels it. 

Since Abraham went down at the divine call 
from Haran to Canaan, (but Terah stayed in Haran 
because he liked it better;) since the pious ^neas 
took old father Anchises out of burning Troy on 
his back and set sail for Italy; since the Longbeards 
came into Lombardy, and the Huns into Hungary, 
and the Romans, Danes, Normans, and others into 
Great Britain to make up the far-famed "Anglo- 
Saxon" race; since the Pilgrims, Puritans, Cava- 
liers, Huguenots, Dutchmen and other folks crossed 
the ocean with their household gear to occupy new 
habitations in America; since a time when the 
memory of man runneth not to the contrary, there 
has been a terrible amount of moving in the world. 
It seems like a nervous habit. And I will wager 
that when it was not otherwise constrained by cir- 
cumstances it has usually shown itself most strongly 
in the vernal season, — that is, in the north tem- 
perate zone, somewhere about May first. 

90 



MOVING DAY 

Understand, I am not now referring to nomads 
and their vagrant tribes. They are people whose 
only idea of permanence is a ceaseless wandering. 
But the folks of whom I speak are house-builders 
and home-lovers. They want a roof, and a hearth- 
stone or some kind of a substitute. But they are 
unwilling to be bound to it, or perhaps they are 
unable to hold on to it, indefinitely. 

Sometimes they are forced out, with bitter sor- 
row, by the relentless hand of avarice, or by the 
bloody fist of war. There is no sight more pitiful 
than an evicted family, unless it be a family in 
flight before a cruel and lustful conqueror, — such 
as I have seen by thousands upon the roads of 
France and Belgium in the late world-war. 

But more often these migrations, in peaceful 
times, are the result of altered conditions in industry 
and trade; or of a desire for an improved situation, 
or a finer climate, or a more convenient dwelling; 
or perhaps merely of a subconscious wish for a 
change, in the hope that it will mean a betterment. 

Partially civilized man, if we consider him in 
the light of self-knowledge, is evidently a home- 
making creature with migratory instincts. 

I admit that there are exceptions, or, to be more 
91 



CAMP-FIRES 

exact, cases in which the home-keeping affection 
outweighs and overmasters the wandering impulse. 
That is my own case, though I have come to it late 
in life. I like my old camp of Avalon, with its big 
trees, and the marble bird-bath in the garden, and 
the tall pillars of the verandahs. I don't want to 
leave it until I have to. 

There are many farms, and mansions, and cas- 
tles, in various parts of the world, which have been 
in the possession of the same family for several 
generations. Even in the cities there are real-estate 
holdings which have passed from grandfather to 
grandson, with their "unearned increment." Yet 
the Astors do not live where they used to live; 
and the Croyes, who claim to be the most ancient 
princely house of the world, cannot afford to in- 
habit their castles without American subsidy. The 
Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs have had a no- 
torious moving. But I fancy they sometimes hanker 
for their former dwellings. 

At a banquet in New York or Chicago or Los 
Angeles or San Francisco, how many men do you 
meet who were born in those cities? At a mass- 
meeting how many of the shouters can say 

"My foot is on my native heath"? 
92 



MOVING DAY 

If we could have a plebiscite of the world on the 
proposition: We claim the right to stay where we 
are and we promise never to move : how many af- 
firmative votes do you suppose you would get? 
Would it make any difference whether people were 
living in private homes or socialistic phalansteries? 
Would not every individual regard "an habitation 
enforced" as a kind of prison? 

How many times have you moved, reader? For 
myself, including childhood, the number runs up 
to ten times, not counting a half-dozen summer 
cottages in which my family has been installed, 
and a villa in Switzerland, a house in Paris, a hut 
in Norway, and a mansion in The Hague. None 
of them has made much difference in the real values 
of life. Things look rather settled for me now, with 
a winter camp in New Jersey and a summer shack 
on the Maine coast. In both of these temporary 
homes work is pleasant, and in either of them I 
should be happy to labor through to the end of the 
job. But I will not accept a guaranty of that de- 
sired fate on condition of a pledge to undertake no 
more travels, no more adventures. 

I have been thinking of the "moving" episodes 
of some of the writers whom I love most to read, 

93 



CAMP-FIRES 

Shakespeare, after many mutations, settled down 
as a rich man in the best house at Stratford-on- 
Avon; but he had to leave it in less than five years. 
Milton was forced to many changes of residence, 
and at the end he was a poor man, and cared not 
much where he lived, provided he could have music 
and the joy of inward vision. Burns was an in- 
spired migratory crofter; Wordsworth, a footpath 
adventurer, who nested finally at Rydal Mount. 
Charles Lamb was never driven from London and 
the "sweet security'* of city streets, but he com- 
plained charmingly of the inconvenience of moving 
his abode within those precincts. Tennyson in 
youth moved often, but when the time came he 
fixed his winter home at Farringf ord and his summer 
home at Aldworth. Browning belonged to London 
and to Italy, and moved around as it pleased him, 
always pursuing his dramatic quest of the individual 
soul. Dickens and Thackeray were Londoners in- 
dubitable, but they shifted residences often within 
their city, and they travelled abroad, and they 
searched for a general human view of life. Steven- 
son was by choice and by necessity an adventurer; 
how many "movings" he had between Edinburgh 
and Samoa I know not; but through them all he 



MOVING DAY 

followed his dream of telling vivid stories of life, 
and of making true comments upon it in his essays. 
Kipling is still with us in the modern "movies,** 
so we may not speak of him without reserve. We 
know that he has had habitations in India, in Ver- 
mont, and in Sussex, and that whether he lives in 
Bombay or in Burwash he keeps with him the same 
keen vision, straight word, and what Mrs. Gerould 
calls his "remarkable Tightness.*' But, if I mistake 
not, his movings have carried him far beyond his 
first "Plain Tales from the Hills.*' 

After all, reader, be we rich or poor, learned or 
unlearned, is not Moving Day marked in all our 
calendars ? Is it not a symbol of the unexempt 
condition of our mortal pilgrimage ? 

From house to house we move; but that sig- 
nifies little, if we do not overburden ourselves with 
rubbish. 

From youth to age we move; but that is not fatal 
if we do not overload ourselves with prejudices. 

From opinion to opinion we move; but that is 
natural if we are not forced to do it in haste. The 
man who thinks when old precisely the same on 
all points as he thought when young, is not a con- 
servative. He is an obstacle. 

95 



CAMP-FIRES 

I recall what Stevenson says in one of his essays: 
"I look back to the time when I was a Socialist 
with something like regret. I have convinced my- 
self (for the moment) that we had better leave these 
great changes to what we call great blind forces; 
their blindness being so much more perspicacious 
than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men. 
I seem to see that my own scheme would not 
answer; and all the other schemes I have ever 
heard propounded would depress some elements of 
goodness just as much as they would encourage 
others." 

Schemes, theories, systems and panaceas are the 
lambrequins and antimacassars of the mental life, 
— things to be left behind on Moving Day. They 
will not fit the new house. Only the essentials are 
worth transportation. 

For my part, there are just three things that 
seem worth carrying through all earthly migrations 
of the spirit. First, the Ten Commandments. 
Second, the Golden Rule. Third, the "faithful 
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 

Among the typically transient dwellings of the 
world are the parsonage, the residence of the mili- 

96 



MOVING DAY 

tary or naval commandant, and the White House 
at Washington. 

Do you remember the inscription that George 
Herbert wrote for the mantelpiece of his vicarage 
in Bemerton ? 

"to my successor 
**If thou chance for to find 
A new house to thy mind. 
And built without thy cost; 
Be good to the poor. 
As God gives thee store. 
And then my labor's not lost." 

But the symbol of Moving Day runs far beyond 

the earthly mutations of dwelling, and the changes 

of opinion and theory, to which we are all subject. 

* It reminds us of the great migration from the known 

to the unknown, which we call death. 

Here is something universal, inevitable, and there- 
fore worth thinking about. This is Moving Day, 
indeed. Not one of us can get away from it when 
it comes. 

Yet I have no sympathy with those who would 
make the fact of death the controlling factor of 
life. The flaming inscriptions on the bill-boards, 
"Prepare to meet thy God," and the exhortations 

97 



CAMP-FIRES 

of the preachers, "Live to-day as if you were to 
die to-morrow," leave me cold. The meeting, (I 
say it reverently,) has already taken place. I do 
not expect to die to-morrow. I want to take life 
as it comes, — as bravely, as decently, as cheerfully 
as possible. There are lots of innocent, interesting, 
and possibly useful things which I propose doing 
to-day, which I should probably not do if I thought 
that I had to die to-morrow. 

The beloved ones, the friends, who have moved 
before me into the unknown world, I believe are 
still living. I have no need of Sir Oliver Lodge nor 
of the excessively Belgian Shakespeare, Maeter- 
linck, to assure me of their existence. I rely upon 
a better Teacher. 

Nor do I think that my invisible friends would 
choose to speak to me through persons, — ^mediums, 
— ^with whom they would have had no sympathy 
nor intercourse in mortal life. Nor would they use 
a patented Ouija board for their communications. 
They would speak to me directly, — my father, my 
dear daughter Dorothea, — and I believe they have 
done so, whether in the body or out of the body, 
I know not. But these are "things which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter." 



MOVING DAY 

Meanwhile let us take our earthly moving days 
as best we can. And for the last migration a word 
from Joseph Beaumont, written three centuries 
ago, is still timely: 

"Home is everywhere to thee 
Who canst thine own dwelling be; 
Yea, tho* ruthless Death assail thee. 
Still thy lodging will not fail thee: 
Still thy Soul's thine own; and she 
To an House removed shall be; 
An eternal House above. 
Walled, and roofed, and paved with Love. 
There shall these mud-walls of thine. 
Gallantly repaired, out-shine 
Mortal stars; — no stars shall be 
In that Heaven but such as Thee." 



99 



VIII 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

Civilization began with a wood-fire. 

*Tis the coal-fire that has carried it on, — ^and, 
some think, too far. 

The warmth diffused by burning wood is assuredly 
the oldest of "creature comforts." Doubtless Adam 
and Eve knew the joy of it when they started from 
Eden on the long adventure. The nights are some- 
times biting cold in Mesopotamia, however hot the 
days, and the gentle calefaction of a few blazing 
sticks must have been grateful to the shivering 
pair, — especially in the fig-leafy period of their 
attire, before they had received the heavenly gift 
of fur coats. 

Certainly their great-grandson Jubal, "the father 
of all such as handle the harp and the organ," and 
his half-brother Tubal-Cain, "the instructer of 
every artificer in brass and iron," had fires of wood, 
perhaps also of charcoal, for their work. And so, 
or in some such fashion, all human arts and crafts, 
inventions and contrivances, have sprung from the 
red seed of fire, planted in the bodies of trees, the 
ancient friends of man. 

100 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

Greek poetry tells the same tale otherwise. 
Prometheus, the foresighted, stole a spark from 
the hearth of the great hall of Olympus, and brought 
it to earth hidden in a stalk of fennel. For this the 
jealous Olympians were enraged at him, and con- 
demned him to undying torture. 

But the tribes of the Orient say that the benev- 
olent fire-thief was a bird; and the North American 
Indians hold that it was a coyote, — a beast which 
has kept the trick of theft, without a trace of benevo- 
lence. 

Tell the tale as you will, the meaning is identical. 
It was the mastery of fire that gave man the ad- 
vantage over the lower animals in all material things. 
It built Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem, 
Athens, Rome, and many other cities of renown. 
But in the beginning, and through innumerable 
centuries thereafter, it was only and always wood- 
fire. 

Possibly, now and then petroleum was added 
(after the manner of the rash and indolent house- 
maid) to hasten and augment the blaze. Does not 
Job, that early capitalist, boast that "the rocks 
poured me out rivers of oil " ? 

But the amorphous mineral, coal, — ^the miunmy 
101 



CAMP-FIRES 

of wood, — ^the latent heat of fallen forests laid up in 
cold storage for our use, — ^who can tell when it was 
first discovered ? At what time and by what chance, 
happy or unhappy, did man find out that those 
dusky rocks would burn ? 

Was it when some cave-dweller made his fire- 
place on a vein of lignite passing through the floor 
of his den, and suddenly saw it all aglow? Was it 
when some primitive cottager took a fancy to those 
smooth blocks of black stone for the building of 
his hearth, and found that his fire laid hold upon 
its foundations? In cave or cottage, that must 
have been a surprise. No doubt the news of it 
spread quickly as a dire portent. Perhaps the 
legends of fire-and-smoke-breathing dragons, in- 
habiting caverns among the hills, had their source 
in some such accident. 

Be that as it may, it is certain that the use of 
coal for heating purposes was late to begin and 
slow to progress. The British apparently led the 
way, somewhere in the twelfth century, and by 
the sixteenth century the practice had so increased 
in London that the Brewers Company petitioned 
Queen Elizabeth to forbid it, alleging "Hersealfe 
greatley greved and anoyed with the taste and 
102 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

smoke of the sea eooles." In Paris it went the same 
way. The dainty Parisians maintained that the 
burning of coal poisoned the air, dirtied the wash, 
injured the lungs, and spoiled the complexion of 
the ladies. Horrible ! This barbarous practice 
must terminate itself. Accordingly it was forbidden 
in 1714, and again as late as 1769. 

Yet somehow or other it continued, and grew, 
and spread upon the face of earth, and diffused its 
sulphurous fumes in air, piling above our monstrous 
cities what Ruskin has called the "storm-cloud of 
the nineteenth century." Tall chimneys, vomiting 
gloom, broke the sky-line. Forges blazed and flared. 
Factories sprang like exhalations from the ground. 
Railway-trains ran roaring up and down the con- 
tinents. Steamships wove their spider-web of cross- 
ing lines and lanes over the sea. Man's power to 
make things and to move things increased tenfold, 
a hundredfold, a thousandfold. And of this new 
world, — civilized, we call it, — coal-fire is king. 

For this reason, some say, Germany attacked 
France in 1870 to gain possession of the coal-fields 
of Lorraine, and again in 1914 to grab the Briey 
Basin and the mines around Lens. For this reason, 
some say, the empire of Britain is founded on a 
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CAMP-FIRES 

coal-pit, and when that is exhausted it will fall. 
For this reason, some say, the present prosperity 
of mankind is illusory and transient, and some coal- 
less day we shall all freeze or starve to death. An 
imitator of Rudyard Kipling puts it thus: 

When the ultimate coal-mine is empty and the miners' 
last labor is done. 

When the pick and the drill are silent and the furnaces 
die, one by one. 

Then the trains will stall on the railway, and the fac- 
tories all grow dumb. 

And shivering man will cover his head and wait for The 
End to come. 

Perhaps, — ^perhaps! Yet the prophecy does not 
curdle my marrow. As the Kingship of Coal was 
not primeval, so its perpetuity is not assured. Nor 
would the dethronement of the present monarch 
necessarily be final and fatal. A competent Regent 
has been discovered in Oil. Behind him, like a 
sturdy heir-apparent, we see the rising head of 
Electric Power. In the dim distance we discern 
various heirs presumptive, — Sun-heat yet unex- 
ploited; Tide-force yet unharnessed. That em- 
bryonic wonder, of whom Sir Oliver Lodge tells 
us, Atomic Explosion, still slumbers in the womb 
104 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

of nature, waiting the day of delivery. Who knows 
but what The Coming Man, having taken the need- 
ful precautions, may gently insert a spoonful of 
atoms into a safety-exploder and generate power 
enough to run the world's machines for a year? 

Meantime there is no present reason, moral or 
economic, why we should not come back, after our 
day's work, and sit down beside the old wood-fire, 
and get the good of it. 

Once a power, it is still a friend. With a mod- 
erate and variable heat, it gives out light and cheer. 
It talks a little, and sings a little, and makes a soli- 
tary room less lonely. Old-fashioned it certainly 
is; wasteful it may be, — extravagant, if you like 
to call it so, with fire-wood at its present price; but 
for me it answers precisely to the French phi- 
losopher's definition of a luxury, — chose tres nSces- 
saire. 

Indeed it is the last of the luxuries that I would 
forego under duress of the High Cost of Living. If 
need be, as the poet says, 

I can do without sugar and butter and eggs; 
I can give up my carriage and trust t* my legs; 
The dream of a motor, or even a Ford 
105 



CAMP-FIRES 

I renounce, while my plumber rolls by like a lord; 
I can cut out my tailor, and wear my old shoes. 
And resign from the club to escape the high dues; 
I abstain from the movie, the opera, the play, 
The lure of the bookshop, the florist's display; 
All, all, I surrender that Hard Times require; 
But leave me, ah leave me, my bonny wood-fire. 

My fireplace is not a splendiferous one, with huge, 
carven mantel, brought (or copied) from some Ital- 
ian palace or Bavarian castle. I like not these 
gigantic intruders in modest American rooms. The 
fire smokes or smoulders discouraged in their cavern- 
ous depths. A plain, useful hearth, by preference 
of red bricks or tiles, and a chimney that draws 
well, are worth more than all the decorated chim- 
neypieces in the world. 

In andirons I would admit a little fancy, but no 
ostentation. Mine are twin near-bronze figures of 
Indian maidens that used to stand, long ago, on 
top of the newel-posts at the foot of the stairway 
in an ancient New York hostelry. These I found 
by chance in a junk-shop, and had low steel bars 
fitted to them, to hold the wood. Goldilocks calls 
them Pocahontas and Minnehaha. They are not 
beautiful, nor ugly, but they seem to fit the place, 
106 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

smiling as they warm their backs at the blaze. They 
appear to be dressed, let me hasten to say, in 
decorous deerskin garments with fringes. 

Behind these proper and benignant figures the 
fire is kindled every morning from the first of Oc- 
tober to the first of May, and later if need be. Is 
the day warm.?^ The windows are easily opened. 
Is it bitter cold ? Then pile on the wood, — as Hor- 
ace says, 

" Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco 
Large reponens.'* 

That is, in modern American, beat the cold by 
boosting the fire. 

Do you want to know how to light it.?^ I can 
tell you a trick that is worth learning in these days 
of costly kindling. 

You must have a thick bed of ashes. This is 
difficult to secure and protect if you are married. 
But it can be done by making concessions on other 
points. Now pull out your fire-dogs a little and 
put the round backlog behind them, resting on the 
ashes. Stuff a few sheets of dry newspaper, (old 
copies of the Social Uplifter are best,) under its 
curving side. Above this place just four, — ^no more, 
— sticks of kindling-wood, not horizontally, mind 
107 



CAMP-FIRES 

you, but perpendicularly, or rather "slantendic- 
ularly," leaning against the backlog. In front of 
this, lying on the andirons and close against the 
kindlings, place your forelog. Then apply the match 
to the paper. In two minutes you will have a beau- 
tiful little blaze. Now you can lay on your third 
log, — ^but gently, gently,^ — and your fire is well 
started for the day. 

Reader, you may think that paragraph meticulous 
and trifling. But really and truly it is an invaluable 
guide-post. If you will follow it, in a year it will 
save you the price of a subscription to the maga- 
zine, to say nothing of the profanity which you 
would have expended in trying to light choked fires. 
If your wife won't let you have the bed of ashes, 
try that excellent invention, the Cape Cod Fire- 
lighter. 

Air is the great thing, remember, — ^free circula- 
tion, a good draft, — ^both for fire-building and for 
thought-kindling. We smother our poor minds by 
piling on ideas and theories. We choke our high- 
school and college education with a preposterous 
overload of "courses." We encumber our social 
programme with vast heaps of universal reform, 
and complain that "we can't get anything done," 
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FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

because we fail in the fool's effort to do everything 
at once. 

Why try to do good things in a silly way ? Why 
waste matches by applying them immediately to 
the backlog? Take the little sticks first. And 
above all let the fresh air of open discussion, prac- 
tical experiment, illustration, comparison of ex- 
periences, criticism, humor, and enthusiasm play 
freely through the fire of your theories and plans. 

In education, for example, I would sweep away 
half of the "courses" and two-thirds of the "ex- 
aminations," and concentrate attention on teaching 
boys and girls to use their powers of observation 
accurately, their powers of reasoning intelligently, 
their powers of imagination and sympathy vividly, 
and their powers of will sanely and strongly, — ^in 
short, to know things as they are, to conceive them 
as they might be, and to help make them as they 
ought to be. That is the real purpose of education. 
And I think it may be reached, or at least ap- 
proached, better through a few studies well chosen 
than through a mass of studies piled on at random. 

But these are only "firelight views," reader; 
they are not systematic, sharp-cut, unalterable 
theories. To such the magical light of the dancing, 
109 



CAMP-FIRES 

flickering flames, the mystical glow of the orange- 
red embers, are not favorable. They lend them- 
selves rather to the inspiration of dreams, and hopes, 
and fancies. They are friendly to memories and 
visions, without which indeed the journey of life 
would be dull and cheerless. 

Yet I cannot agree with that good British essayist, 
E. V. Lucas, when he suggests that the wood- 
fire harmonizes with spiritualistic experiments, and 
goes on to say, "If England were warmed wholly 
by hot-water pipes or gas-stoves, the Society for 
Psychical Research would soon be dissolved." On 
the contrary it is precisely in that stale-heated, 
stuffy, musky atmosphere that mediums flourish 
and perform their most marvellous featg with their 
feet. The frankly blazing wood-fire is too healthy 
for them. 

I have heard of only one successful stance that 
was held beside an open hearth. The story was 
told me by the Reverend Doctor Wonderman, a de- 
lightful comrade and a firm believer. He was sit- 
ting with a mediumistic couple, and they had pro- 
duced for his benefit during the evening various 
"manifestations" of knocks and scratchings and 
movements of furniture. The "control" was sup- 
110 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

posed to be the soul of a departed Indian Chief, — 
Bumbagoostook, or some such name as that, — a 
penetrating spirit, but wayward, and of rude, 
boisterous humor. As a final and conclusive proof 
the Doctor asked that Bumbagoostook should hand 
him his favorite pipe, which was then lying on the 
mantelpiece. Instantly the pipe . leaped from the 
shelf, hurtled through the air, and struck the good 
Doctor violently in the midriff. Whether he laughed 
or not, I do not know, but it seems to me likely. 
Nothing of that kind has ever happened by my 
wood-fire. I prefer to get my pipes for myself, 
rather than have to do with unrefined spirits. 

Plenty of good things have been written about 
wood-fires, — ^whole books, in fact, like Hamilton 
Mabie*s "My Study Fire," and Charles Dudley 
Warner's "Backlog Studies." There are also little 
fragments scattered here and there, which are worth 
picking up and remembering. 

Horace has an excellent bit in his second epode, 
where he describes the honest farmer's wife, — mod- 
est, merry, sunburned woman, glad to play her 
part in keeping house and bearing children, — ^who 
lays the dry fagots on the hearth, ready to welcome 
the homecoming of her tired husband. 
Ill 



CAMP-FIRES 

Cicero in his dialogue "De Senectute^* gives a 
graphic picture of old Manius Curius sitting quietly 
by his country fireside and refusing the conquered 
Samnites who brought him a heap of gold. He said 
that he did not think it as fine to have gold as to be 
superior to those who had it. 

Tibullus, the so-called bucolic poet, breathes a 
true fireside wish in his first elegy: 

"Let lowly fortune lead my life 
In quiet ways, remote from strife. 
If only on this hearth of mine 
A constant fire may brightly shine." 

But there is nothing better on this subject than 
the lines of Robert Messinger, an American, writ- 
ing on the familiar theme of "old wine, old wood, 
old books, and old friends." Here is the second 
stanza: 

"Old wood to burn ! 
Ay, bring the hill-side beech 
From where the owlets meet and screech 

And ravens croak; 
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; 
Bring too a lump of fragrant peat. 
Dug *neath the fern; 
The knotted oak; 
112 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

A fagot too, perhap. 

Whose bright flame dancmg, winking. 

Shall light us at our drinking; 

While the oozing sap 
Shall make sweet music to our thinking." 

At our place in Maine I have always been able 
to keep the home-fires burning with white birch 
and dry spruce from our own woodlands around 
the bungalow. But that is quite a different thing 
from feeding the hearth with fuel from the eight 
acres of home-lot here in Princeton. 

Every now and then one of the trees that my own 
hands have planted and tended here is smitten in its 
lusty youth and must come down; and sometimes 
there are deaths among the older trees, and they 
are brought to the funeral pyre. From such sad 
events I draw what comfort I can, and remember by 
the hearth the joy that the trees gave while they 
were living. 

There was a pair of silver cut-leaf birches that 
succumbed one after the other, to some mysterious 
malady; a massy rock-maple that grew too great 
and blocked the sunlight from the windows; a trio 
of tall Norway firs that died at the top; some cherry- 
trees fallen into barren decrepitude, and mulberries 
113 



CAMP-FIRES 

rent and crippled beyond repair by a beautiful, 
cruel ice-storm. Once a giant pine-tree was struck 
by lightning, and we gave him a splendid, long- 
drawn flame-burial, with rattling, crackling accom- 
paniments, like salvoes of musketry over the ashes 
of a fallen hero. Once there was the remnant of an 
ancient orchard that went the way of all wood and 
passed into fire. That was the best of all. 

Old apple-wood burns cleanly, brightly, serenely, 
^dth a delicate and spicy fragrance. The flames 
bloom softly over the logs; they play around them 
and dance above them with shifting colors of canary 
yellow, and pale blue, and saffron; they send up 
wavering pennons of pure golden light, which sink 
down again into fringes of mellow radiance. Deeper 
and deeper the transforming element sinks into the 
heart of the log, which still keeps its shape, an in- 
candescent round, silvered with a fine white ash; 
until at last the stick breaks and crumbles into 
glowing coals, of a color which no words can de- 
scribe. It is like the petals of a certain rose, whose 
tint I remember, but whose name I have forgotten. 
(Tell me its name, reader, if you are sending a letter 
this way.) So the lovely ruins of the old apple-tree 
lie heaped upon the hearth, and over them flow 
114 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

tiny ripples of azure and mauve and violet flame, 
lower and lower, fainter and fainter, till all dies 
down into gray, and the tree has rendered its last 
offering of beauty and service to man. 

One of the practical merits of an open wood-fire 
is its convenience for destroying rubbish. Old 
pamphlets and letters, dusty manuscripts that 
you once thought would be worth touching up for 
publication, scraps and fragments of all kinds that 
have cluttered your shelves and drawers for years, 
even new books that you have tried in vain to read, 
— ^how easy it is to drop them into the blaze and 
press them down with the poker ! 

But the habit is a bad one, for three reasons: 
first, because it dishonors the hearth with black 
ashes; second, because you may set the chimney 
on fire; third, because you never can tell what is 
rubbish. 

You remember how King Jehoiakim made a mis- 
take in that respect when Jehudi came into his pres- 
ence to read from a little manuscript an extremely 
disagreeable prophecy of Jeremiah. There was a 
fire on the hearth burning before him. And it came 
to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four 
leaves, he cut it with the penknife and cast it into 
115 



CAMP-FIRES 

the fire. "So," thought the king, "we have done 
with that rubbish." But neither was it rubbish 
nor had he done with it. For Jeremiah caused an- 
other Httle roll to be written with the same un- 
pleasant words in it, and there were added unto 
them many Hke words, and they were all true, and 
it was worse for Jehoiakim in the end than if he 
had preserved and heeded the first book. 

Many a man burns what he wishes later he had 
kept. 

Another use of a wood-fire, though you can hardly 
call it a practical one, is its power of begetting fan- 
tasies, some romantic and some grotesque, in the 
mind of him that gazeth into it. 

Here I often sit, when the day's task is done, and 
indulge my vagrant fancy with improbable ad- 
ventures and impossible labors. To go a-hunting 
in the Caucasus, and a-fishing in New Zealand; 
to complete either my long-planned book on "Wild 
Animals that Have Refused to Meet Me," or that 
much-needed treatise on "The Moral Effects of 
Chewing Gum"; to get out a serious edition of 
The New RepvhliCy — think what it would mean to 
the world if that journal, with all its natural gifts of 
omniscience, omnipresence, and onmipotence, only 
116 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

had the added grace of ethical earnestness! But 
these are vain visions. Let us return to the reahties. 
The very best thing about a real wood-fire is its 
power of drawing friends around it. Here comes 
the new Herodotus, not to discuss the problems 
of antiquity which he has already settled, but to 
tell the most absorbing tales and anecdotes of the 
people that you know or have known, and to dis- 
pute your most cherished opinions in a way that 
makes you love him. Here comes Fra Paolo, the 
happy controversialist, ready for a friendly bicker 
on any subject under heaven, and full of projects 
for rescuing the most maligned characters of his- 
tory. Here come the lean young Literary Rancher 

with tales of the once wild West, and the wonderful 

I 
Writer of Sad Stories, who is herself always cheer- 
ful. Here come Goldilocks and Brownie to sit on 
the rug, tuck up their skirts and toast their shins, 
while they talk of their joyous plans and propound 
deep simple questions that no one can answer. Here 
come travellers and professors and poets and am- 
bassadors, not reserved and stately, but thawed 
and relaxed to a delightful companionship by the 
magic of the wood-fire. 
Well, they have all gone their way now, and while 
117 



CAMP-FIRES 

the logs bum down, I sit alone in the book-room, 
pencilling these lines. But you, reader, — if your 
eyes glance over them at all, it will be in the happy 
season when your fire is kindled out-of-doors. In 
the deep, green woods, on the mountainside, by 
the seashore, on the bank of some quiet lake or 
flowing stream; — "the camp-fire, the cooking-fire, 
the smudge-fire, the little friendship-fire";— but 
that is an old story, of which I have written in an- 
other book. I will not rep>eat it now, though the 
theme is one upon which I could play new varia- 
tions forever. Let me rather wish you good luck 
in the lighting of your fire in the open, and leave 
with you a saying from old Plutarch. 

He says (in his Symposiacs, Question IV,) that 
when his guests have departed he would leave one 
flame burning as a symbol of his reverence for fire. 
No other thing is so like a creature alive. It is 
moved and nourished from within; and by its 
brightness, like the soul, reveals and illuminates 
things around it; and even in dying resembles a 
vital principle, sighing and trembling ere it departs. 

This, then, is what the Greek philosopher has to 
say about the firehght. But he says it, mark you, 
only of fire indoors. 

118 



FIRELIGHT VIEWS 

Outdoors the case is different. There the fire, 
though lovelier, must never be left alone. Fold 
your tents and march on; but first put out the em- 
bers, lest a single spark, running wild in the woods, 
make you the careless father of a great conflagra- 
tion. 



119 



IX 

FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

F OR half a year, now, I have been writing a paper 
a month, without so much as mentioning a subject 
near to my heart, — the ancient, apostolic, consola- 
tory art of angling. 

It must be admitted the season has not been in 
harmony with that subject. It has been a villain- 
ous rude winter, (1919-20,) violent, pitiless, per- 
sistent as a Prussian; ice on top of snow and snow 
on top of ice, and howling ravenous winds, so that 
even those hardened anglers who let down their 
lines through holes in frozen ponds, have been de- 
barred from their gelid sport and driven to find com- 
fort by the fireside. 

Yet fancy does not freeze in zero weather. Mem- 
ories and dreams run out across the cold to leafy 
forests and flowing rivers and sparkling lakes. If 
there has been thus far no word of angling in these 
essays, you may set it down, reader, to a self- 
denying ordinance, and reward me with leave to tell 
a few stories of fishing. Not fish-stories, mark you; 

no 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

for I have no great catches, no finny monsters to 
describe; only a few small experiences which may 
serve to illustrate the spirit of the game. 

For such recital the signal has been given. Last 
week, on a sharp icicled morning, the first hoarse 
robin bravely sounded his tup-tup-tup outside my 
window. When these pages come to you the green- 
wood tree will be full of song and the kingfisher 
flashing blue along the stream. 

In many strange waters have I fished, the Nile 
and the Jordan, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the 
Danube, but in none that seemed to me so strange 
as the little rivers where I cast an occasional fly 
while the world-war was going on. 

I was sent to Holland, (presumably "for my 
country's good,") in the autumn of 1913. There 
was no fishing there to speak of. Canals, slow- 
moving rivers, shallow lakes, with their store of 
pike and perch and eels, oflPer no attraction to a 
sporting angler. To catch such fish is more a busi- 
ness than a sport. There was one pretty trout- 
stream in South Limburg; but it was so beset with 
factories and mills and persecuted by bait-fisher- 
men and netters that it did not tempt me 
121 



CAMP-FIRES 

In these sad circumstances of deprivation, it 
seemed "almost Providential" to find that the 
American Minister to the Netherlands was also ac- 
credited to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. A 
strict sense of official duty called him thither every 
year; and a willingness to enjoy small gifts of plea- 
sure paid him wages by the way. 

Nature has been kind to that little inland coun- 
try, and history has handled it roughly enough to 
make it picturesque with human interest. It holds 
more castles ruined and unrestored than any other 
land of equal size. Its small triangle of territory, — 
about a thousand square miles, dovetailed in be- 
tween Germany, France, and Belgium, — ^lies on top 
of the Ardennes, a thousand feet or more above sea- 
level. It is furrowed by deep valleys, clothed with 
rich woods of beech and pine, diversified with gray 
and red cliffs, embroidered with wild flowers and 
many bright unnavigable rivers. Its royal family 
contains the six loveliest young princesses in the 
world; and its 250,000 people are as friendly, hos- 
pitable, and independent as the traveller's heart 
could wish. All this and more you may find set 
forth admirably in the big book on Luxembourg by 
Mr. George B-enwick, the British war correspondent. 
122 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

For useful information I refer you to him, and turn 
to my fishing. 

My first excursion was made in June, 1914, — the 
Potsdam Plotters' month. Of what I saw then to 
convince me that Germany had chosen war and 
was ready to force it, the story is told in Fighting 
for Peace and need not be repeated. 

The second trip was in April, 1915, after Germany's 
long crime had been begun. It was necessary for 
the x\merican Minister to go down to take charge 
of certain British interests in Luxembourg, — a few 
poor people who had been stranded there and who 
sorely needed money and help. (What a damned 
inhuman thing war is, no one knows who has not 
been in the midst of it !) Mr. Derulle, the faithful 
American Consular Agent in the city of Luxem- 
bourg, did the work, but the minister had to convey 
the funds and supervise the accoimts. 

The journey was interesting. The German 
Minister at The Hague was most polite and oblig- 
ing in the matter of providing a visS for the pass- 
ports, and giving the needful papers with big seals 
to pass the guards in what was euphemistically 
called "German-occupied territory," It grated on 
my nerves, but it was the only way, 
123 



CAMP-FIRES 

"Which route would you prefer to have me fol- 
low," I asked, "through Germany, or through 
Belgium?" 

"But, my dear colleague," replied the courteous 
Baron von Kuhlman, "that is entirely for you to 
choose." 

"With your advice," I answered, "since I am 
asking a favor." 

"Well, then," he smiled, "probably you would 
like to go by way of Maestricht and Aix-la-Chapelle, 
— ^in your own automobile, — ^we will detail an escort 
to make the journey easier and quicker." 

At the border-barrier, — a double fence of elec- 
trically charged barbed wire, with a sentried open- 
ing ten feet wide, — ^the escort appeared. He was an 
amiable and intelligent captain of cavalry in the 
German reserve, university graduate, cloth manu- 
facturer, father of a family, pleasant companion, 

named von M . His conversation was good. 

Three of his remarks were memorable because they 
lifted a corner of the veil from the German state of 
mind. 

We were rolling along the splendid highway south 
from Aix, through a country bare of men not in 
uniform. "This is a terrible war," exclaimed the 
124 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

captain, "not our fault, but terrible for us, all the 
same ! Do you think a quiet middle-aged man like 
me enjoys being called away from his business, his 
home, his children, to join the colors ? We shall be 
ruined. Of course we shall win; but what? Our 
money spent, our industries crippled, the best of 
our youth killed or maimed, — it is a bad outlook, 
but we are forced to accept it." 

In the quaint timbered villages on the plateau 
of the Hohes Venn many soldiers were on furlough, 
strolling with the village girls in frankly amatory 
attitudes. "Pleasant for these boys to come home 
for a few days and see their old sweethearts again," 
I remarked. The captain smiled: "Yes, — ^well, — 
but, — ^you see, these boys don't belong to these 
villages; and the girls are not old sweethearts, you 
see. But the army does not discourage it. Men 
will be needed. They will all be good Germans." 

Just before we cross the border beyond St. Vith 
the captain says: "My general at Aix has tele- 
graphed the German commandant in Luxembourg 
to detail an officer to act as escort and body-guard 
to your Excellency in that country." Polite, but 
astounding ! 

"Many thanks," I answered, "most thoughtful 
125 



CAMP-FIRES 

of the general. But it will not be necessary. In 
Luxembourg I shall be under protection of her 
Royal Highness the Grand Duchess, sovereign of an 
independent state, in which the Germans have 
volunteered to guard the railways. After paying 
my respects to her and to the Prime Minister, I 
shall call on the German commandant to assure 
him that no escort is desired. Will that be correct 
according to your theory ? " 

The captain blinked, looked down at his boots, 
then grinned approvingly. "Absolutely correct," 
he said, "that is just our theory. But, Gott im 
Himmel, you Americans go straight to the point ! " 

All the diplomatic affairs of the next ten days 
went smoothly; and there were three celestial days 
on various streams, the details of which are vague 
in memory, but the bright spots shine out. 

One day was passed with my friend the notary 
Charles Klein, of the old town of Wiltz, a reputable 
lawyer and a renowned, impassioned fisher. He led 
us, with many halts for refreshment at wayside 
inns, to the little river Sure, which runs through a 
deep, flowery vale from west to east, across the 
Grand Duchy. 

Our stretch of water was between the high-arched 
126 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

Pont de Misere and the abandoned slate-quarry 
of BigonvilU. The stream was clear and lively, 
with many rapids but no falls. It was about the 
size of the Neversink below Claryville, but more 
open. The woods crept down the steep, enfolding 
hills, now on this side, now on that, but never on 
both. One bank was always open for long casting, 
which is a delight. The brown trout, (salmofario), 
were plentiful and plump, running from a quarter 
of a pound to a pound weight. Larger ones there 
must have been, but we did not see them. They 
accepted our tiny American flies, — Beaverkill, Cahill, 
Queen of the Water, Royal Coachman, and so on, — 
at par value, without discount for exchange. It 
was easy, but not too easy, to fill our creels. 

My son and comrade Tertius agreed with me that 
the European brown trout, though distinctly less 
comely than the American brook-trout, or the "rain- 
bow" of the Pacific Coast, (not to speak of the 
gorgeous salmo Roosevelti of Volcano Creek), is a 
fine fellow, a "dead game sport." The birds that 
fluttered and skipped and sang around us were 
something of a puzzle to Tertius, who is an expert 
on this subject in his own country. Some of them, 
— ^blackbirds, wrens, tomtits, linnets, swallows, and 
127 



CAMP-FIRES 

so on,— were easy to identify. The crow and the 
kingfisher are pretty much the same everywhere. 
But there were also many strangers. 

"It is funny," said he, "I can't tell their names, 
but I understand their language perfectly." 

Philip Gilbert Hamerton in The Sylvan Year 
says that there is a tradition among the peasants 
of the Vol Sainte VSronique that every bird repeats 
a phrase of its own in French words, and that some 
wise old persons have the gift of understanding 
them. This gift must be kept secret till a man comes 
to die; then he may communicate it to one of his 
family. But the trouble is that when a man is on 
his death-bed, he is usually thinking about other 
things than bird-lore. So the gift fades out, say 
the peasants, and may soon be lost, like other won- 
derful things. 

The second day of this series that I remember 
clearly was spent on a smaller stream, north of the 
Sure, with Mr. Le G., the son of the British Consul, 
and other pleasant companions. The name of the 
stream is forgotten, but the clear water and the 
pleasant banks of it are "in my mind's eye, Hora- 
tio." It was a meadow-brook very like one that I 
know not far from Norfolk, Connecticut, whither 
128 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

I have often gone to fish with my good friend the 
village storekeeper, S. Cone. 

Now there is in all the world no water more pleas- 
ant to fish than a meadow-brook, provided the 
trout are there. The casting is easy, the wading 
is light, the fish are fat, the flowers of the field are 
plenteous, and the birds are abundant and songful. 
We filled our baskets, dined at the wayside inn, a 
jolly company, and motored back by moonlight 
to the city of Luxembourg. 

Concerning the 1916 journey to my outlying post 
there are a few notes in my diary. I travelled in 
May by rail through Cologne and Gerolstein and 
Trier, There was no visible escort; but probably 
there was one unseen; for at every place where 
I had to change trains, somebody was waiting for 
me, and a compartment was reserved. Everything 
was orderly and polite, even in the stations where 
hundreds of thousands of green-gray soldiers were 
rushing on their way to the great battle at Verdun. 
(Perhaps it was because I sjwke German that people 
were so courteous. Yet for that very reason no 
one could have mistaken me for a native.) But 
the war-bread in the dining-cars was dreadful: 
butter and sugar were not at all: and the meat, 
129 



CAMP-FIRES 

such as it was, had already done duty in the 
soup. 

At Gerolstein, (name made dear by OflPenbach's 
Grande Duchesse,) many civilians got into the train 
with guns, green hats, and netted game-bags with 
fringes. 

"What go they to shoot," I asked a neighbor, 
"is it not the closed time.?" 

"But not for crows," he replied. 

"Crows!" I cried, with a sickening thought of 
the near battle-fields. 

"Yes, mein Herr, crows are good to eat, healthy 
food. In all the meat-shops are they to buy." 

In the capital of Luxembourg, perched on its 
high rock, the German garrison was still in evidence, 
tramping in stolid troops through the streets while 
the citizens turned their backs. Not even a small 
boy would run after the soldiers: think what that 
means ! No longer did the field-gray ones sing when 
they marched, as they used to do in 1915. They 
plodded silent, evidently depressed. The war which 
they had begun so gayly was sinking into their souls. 
The first shadows of the Great Fatigue were falling 
upon them; but lightly as yet. 

Once I thought I heard a military band playing 
130 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

"God Save the King." I ran to the balcony, but 
turned back again, remembering that the same tune 
is set to **Heil Dir im Siegerkranz.'^ 

The Grand Duchess was already away at her 
summer castle of Colmar-Berg. So after "posing" 
the needful cards and writing my name in the book 
at the old palace, and finishing three days of official 
business (and luncheons) with Prime Minister Thorn 
and other dignitaries, I was free to turn to the 
streams. 

The first excursion was with Mr. Emile Meyrisch, 
a genial, broad-shouldered ironmaster, the head of 
great forges at Esch, Diffeedange, and Petange in 
the south country, and an angler of the most con- 
firmed sect. In politics he was a liberal, in business 
perhaps rather an autocrat, and in practice a friend 
to his employees, looking carefully after their food- 
supply and running an open-air school on a hilltop 
for their children, to keep them well and strong. 

He took me to the valley of the Clerf, the loveliest 
little river in Luxembourg.* By ruined castles and 
picturesque villages, among high-shouldered hills 
and smooth green meadows and hanging woods it 
runs with dancing ripples, long curves, and eddy- 
ing pools where the trout lurk close to the bank. 
131 



CAMP-FIRES 

Its course is not from west to east, like the SurCy 
(no, I will not call it by that common German name 
the Sauer.) The Clerf runs from north to south. 
I suppose that was why the south wind, on that 
quiet sunny morning, carried into the placid valley 
a strange continuous rumbling like very distant 
thunder. But the clear stream paid no heed to it, 
flowing with soft, untroubled whispers of content- 
ment on its winding way. And the birds were not 
dismayed nor hindered in their musical love-making. 
And the flowers bloomed in bright peacefulness, 
neither dimmed nor shaken by that faint vibration 
of the upper air. Undoubtedly it was the noise 
of the guns in the offensive Crown Princess " Great 
Offensive" at Verdun, a himdred kilometres away. 

Strange that a sound could travel so far ! Dread- 
ful to think what it meant ! It crossed the beauty 
of the day. But what could one do.? Only fish 
on, and wait, and work quietly for a better day 
when America should come into the war and help 
to end it right. 

A very fat and red-faced Major, whom I had 
met before at Clervaux, rode by in a bridle-path 
through the meadow. He stopped to salute and 
exchange greetings. 

132 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

"How goes it?" I asked. 

^'Verdarmnt schlecht," he replied. "This is a 
dull country. The people simply won't like us. I 
wish I was at home." 

**I too!" I answered. "Gliickliche Reise!'' 

We lunched in the roadside inn of Wilwenuiltz; 
a modest tavern, but a rich feast. The old river- 
guardian was there, a grizzled veteran who angled 
only with the fly, though his patrons were mostly 
bait-fishers. He had scorned to fish in the morn- 
ing. But when he saw my basketful taken with 
the fly, his spirit was stirred within him, and he 
girded up his loins and went forth to the combat. 
That afternoon he beat my whole day's catch by 
three trout. He grinned as he laid his fish out in 
a long row on the bench in front of the inn. 

I spent the night with Notary Klein at Wiltz, 
Ever hospitable, he made a little dinner for me at 
the Hotd du Commerce, — a. little dinner of many 
courses and rare vintages, — ^and like the bridegroom 
at Cana of Galilee he served the best wine last. 

When we reached this point the notary presented 
a request. He said that three officers of the Ger- 
man garrison, who felt very lonely, had asked if 
they might come over to our table after dinner and 
133 



CAMP-FIRES 

drink coffee with us. Had I any objection? Cer- 
tainly not, if he had none. So they came, and we 
talked pleasantly for a couple of hours about vari- 
ous subjects. One of the officers was a professor 
of literature in a small German university. Both 
of the others were well-educated men. Finally we 
drifted toward the war. 

*Why did America sell munitions only to the 
Allies ? It was very unfair.' 

*But the market was open to all. Doubtless any- 
body who had the money could buy.' 

*Yes, perhaps; but then it was plain that if Ger- 
many bought them she could not get them home. 
It was most unfair, not truly neutral.' 

*But could America be expected as a neutral to 
act so as to make up to Germany for her lack of 
effective sea-power ? ' 

*No-o-o, perhaps not. But it was extremely 
unfair. No doubt those British-Americans who 
were so powerful in the United States were to blame 
for it.' 

*0n the contrary; Americans of German descent 
were most prominent in making munitions for the 
Allies. Take the name Schwab, for example, presi- 
dent of the Bethlehem Steel Company, a good Amer- 
134 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

ican. Did the Herren Offizieren think his name was 
of British origin?' 

Slight confusion and hearty laughter followed 
this question. Then the professor spoke up very 
gravely: 

"There is one thing I should like to ask you, Ex- 
cellency. You have travelled a good deal in this 
country. Have you heard the Luxembourgers make 
any objection to the conduct of the German army 
here?" 

"None, Uerr Oberst,** I answered with equal 
gravity, "not the slightest! It is not the conduct 
of your soldiers to which Luxembourg objects, it is 
their presence." 

" Well," he said smiling rather sadly, "Grod knows 
I am tired erf it too. I want to go home to my books. 
But is there no chance that America will come finally 
to the help of Grermany, her old friend ? " 

"Certainly," I replied, "there seems to be a very 
good chance. If the present submarine warfare 
continues, it is practically sure that America will 
assist Grermany in the only possible way, — ^by creat- 
ing a situation in which the war must come to an 
end. That would be the best conceivable help for 
Germany." 

135 



CAMP-FIRES 

With this observation, (rather in the enigmatic 
style of the Delphic oracle,) and with an appropriate 
"good night," the conversation closed, and I went 
home with the Notary. 

But the next day was not spent in fishing as we 
had planned. An invitation had come by telegraph 
during the night, bidding the American minister 
to lunch with the royal family at Colmar-Berg. 
The only available taxicab in Wiltz must be com- 
mandeered, and hot time made over the long road 
in order to reach the castle at the appointed hour. 

"Punctuality," says the proverb, "is the courtesy 
due to kings"; and the saying has an extra, super- 
diplomatic force when the sovereign happens to 
be a very beautiful young lady. 

Of the luncheon I will not write, since it was not 
x^cial, though there were about thirty guests. Ad- 
hering to the old-fashioned rule, I hold that hos- 
pitality lays a certain restraint upon publicity. 
Yet there are some memories which may be recalled 
without offense. 

The American minister's chair was at the right 
of the Grand Duchess, on whose delicate, sensitive 
face the strain of the last two years, and the suffer- 
ings of the poor among her people, had written thin 
136 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

lines of care and grief. She had never coveted a 
crown, — nor did she wear one except a circlet of 
pearls in her dark hair, — and I am sure she was 
glad when the close of the war permitted her to 
hand over the reins of rulership to her sister Char- 
lotte, with Luxembourg independent, sovereign, 
and free to follow her natural sympathies with 
France. 

At my right was the little Duchess Antoinette. 
It was probably her first appearance at such a feast, 
for she was still a mere child, with her long hair 
loose on her shoulders. Her announced engage- 
ment to that hardened ruflSan, the ex-Crown Prince 
of Bavaria, in 1918, was a shock to every one of 
decent feelings. Now that the German siurender 
under the form of armistice has put this horrid en- 
gagement, with other grisly things, into "innocuous 
desuetude," it is pleasant to recall and reflect upon 
the deliverance of the little Duchess from that royal 
incubus. 

After all, royalties are flesh and blood. But there 
is a difference between the clean and the unclean, 
which no crown can disguise. 

The day following the luncheon I had an early 
dinner with M. Pescatore, one of the ablest members 
137 



CAMP-FIRES 

of the Luxembourg Parliament, at his country house, 
and went out at sunset with Madame, to hunt the 
deer in a wonderful beech-forest along the valley 
of the Mamer, 

She was a Belgian countess. Her hunting-dress 
made her look like Rosalind in the Forest of Arden, 
and she carried an effective little rifle. I took no 
gun, having passed the age when the killing of deer 
seems a pleasure. Hour after hour in the lingering 
twilight we roamed that enchanted woodland, among 
the smooth boles of the pillared beeches, under their 
high-arched roof of green, and treading lightly over 
the russet carpet of last year's fallen leaves. My 
spirited companion told me pitiful tales of things 
that she had seen, and knew by sure report from 
her relatives and friends in Belgium, — tales of the 
fierce and lewd realities of the German Schrecklich- 
keiU — things to make an honest man's blood hot 
within him. 

Through the glimmering dusk, from thicket to 
thicket, the dim shapes of does and fawns flitted 
past us unharmed. Then a fine buck stood clearly 
outlined at the end of an open glade. The slender, 
eager huntress threw the rifle to her shoulder. A 
sharp crack echoed through the glade, and the buck 
138 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

leaped away untouched. The huntress turned a 
half -disappointed face to me. "A bad shot," she 
said, "but I could shoot better than that. In Bel- 
gium, par es^mple, with a Prussian boar for mark ! " 

My last day in Luxembourg was spent with Mey- 
risch on the upper waters of the Sure, Lovelier than 
ever seemed that merry, tranquil stream on that 
day of alternate showers and sunshine. The river- 
guardian who kept me company was a strapping 
young Luxemhourgeois who had served as a volun- 
teer in the French army and come home with a 
broken leg and an unbroken spirit. In the fore- 
noon the record says that I took forty-two trout, 
in the afternoon thirteen. Late that night Meyrisch 
made a feast at the Hotel Brasseur in Luxembourg. 
The landlord and his wife were of the company. 
Their oldest boy was with the Belgian army near 
Ypres. The final toast we drank was this: God 
protect the boy and the Cause he fights for ! 

Other fishing-days in war-time I recall. Two 
weeks in Norway in July, 1916, when I made ac- 
quaintance with the big salmon of the river Evanger, 
and proved the superiority of fly-fishing to the de- 
based sport of "harling." Two days on the Itchen, 
near Winchester, just after I got out of hospital in 
139 



CAMP-FIRES 

April, 1917, when my good friend G. E, M. Skues, 
secretary of the Fly-fishers' Club in London, showed 
me how to cast the dry fly so that two of those 
sophisticated Itchen trout were lured and landed- 
But I leave these things unchronicled, (having al- 
ready run beyond the space assigned), and turn 
front-face and unabashed to meet and withstand 
the strictures of my severe and sour-complexioned 
reader, who has been following these lines with scorn- 
ful impatience. 

"Why," I hear him mutter, "does this foolish 
writer talk about silly things like fishing while the 
world-war was going on, and especially now that 
the great social problems of the New Era must be 
solved at once? He is a trifler, a hedonist, a man 
devoid of serious purpose and strenuous effort." 

Well, friend, keep your bad opinion of me if it 
does you any good. Certainly it does me no harm. 

I hold by the advice of the Divine Master who 
told His disciples to go a-fishing, and said to them 
when they were weary, "come ye yourselves apart 
into a desert place and rest awhile." 

I remember the unconquerable French poilus 
whom I saw in their dugouts playing cards, and in 
the citadel of Verdun enjoying merry vaudeville 
140 



FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 

shows. I recall the soldiers whom I saw deliberately 
fishing on the banks of the Marne and the Meuse 
while the guns roared round us. I remember Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, (no slacker), who whenever the 
chance came rejoiced to go a-hunting, and to tell 
about it afterward. I believe that the most serious 
men are not the most solemn, I believe that a 
normal human being needs relaxation and pleasure 
to keep him from strained nerves and a temper of 
fanatical insanity. 

I believe that the New Social State, whatever 
it may be, will not endure, nor be worth preserving, 
unless it has room within it for simple play, and 
pure fun, and unconmiercial joy, and free, happy, 
wholesome recreation. 

Take that as a guide-post, if you will; and then 
let me make my personal confession of a fisherman's 
faith. 

I choose the recreation of angling for four reasons. 
First, because I like it: second, because it does no 
harm to anybody: third, because it brings me in 
touch with Nature, and with all sorts and condi- 
tions of men: fourth, because it helps me to keep 
fit for work and duty. Selah ! 



141 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

It is a curious fact that there is no good guide- 
book to authorship. There are a few self-portraits, 
more or less convincing, of authors at work. There 
are many essays, more or less illuminating, upon 
the craft of writing in general, and upon the habits 
and procedure of certain great writers in partic- 
ular. The best of these confessions and criticisms 
are excellent reading, full of entertainment and in- 
struction for the alert and candid mind in every 
age and calling, and touched with a special, sym- 
pathetic interest for those young persons who have 
sternly resolved, or fondly dreamed, that they will 
follow a literary career. A volume of carefully 
selected material of this kind might be made at- 
tractive and rewarding to readers who are also in- 
tending authors. But the one thing for which such 
a book ought not to be taken, or mistaken, is a 
manual of the profession of literature. 

The reasons for this appear to me quite as re- 
markable as the fact itself. The business of authors 
142 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

being to write, why should we not be able to gather 
from them such instruction in regard to writing, 
and the necessary preparation for it, as would make 
the pathway of authorship so plain that the way- 
faring man though a fool need not err therein? 

The answer to this question is an <^)en secret, 
an instructive paradox. 

There is no jmthway of authorship. 

It is a voyage, if you like; but there are no guide- 
posts in the sea. It is a flight, if you like; but there 
are no tracks in the air. It is certainly not a jour- 
ney along a railway line, or a highroad, or even a 
well-marked trail. 

In this it differs from other vocations like the 
Church, the Bar, the Army, the Navy, Engineer- 
ing, Medicine, or Teaching. For each of these there 
is a pretty clearly defined path of preparatory study, 
with fixed gateways of examination along its course. 
When the last gate is passed and the young doctor 
is licensed to practice, the young clergyman or- 
dained to preach, the young lawyer admitted to 
the bar, the path broadens into a road, which leads 
from one professional duty to another and brings 
him from task to task, if he is fortunate and in- 
dustrious, with the regularity of a time-table, and, 
143 



CAMP-FIRES 

it must be added, with something of the monotony 
of a clock. 

It is not so with the young intending author. 
There is no time of preparation prescribed, or even 
authoritatively advised, for him or for her. There 
are no fierce examiners standing like lions in the 
way. No hard-earned diploma, or certificate, or 
license is demanded. There are no set duties to 
be performed at certain times, like a case to be 
argued at the first session of the court in November, 
or an appendix to be removed next Thursday after- 
noon, or two sermons to be preached every Sunday. 
Intending authors, and for that matter practising 
authors, are like Milton's Adam and Eve when 
the closed gate of Paradise was behind them: 

** The world was all before them where to choose.** 

It looks very free and easy and attractive, this 
vocation of making books. All that the young writer 
has to do is to provide himself, or herself, with paper 
and a pen (or a typewriter), retire into a convenient 
room (almost any kind of a room will answer the 
purpose), and emerge with a book which a pub- 
lisher will print, advertise, and sell, and which the 
public will read. 

144 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

And after that? Why, after that it looks freer 
and easier still. All that the sucxiessful writer has 
to do is to repeat the process with a new book at 
any convenient season. 

But this very freedom, so alluring at a distance, ^ 
becomes bewildering and troublesome at close range. 
The young intending author who has a serious am- 
bition and a mind in thinking order very soon recog- 
nizes, either by the light of pure reason or by the 
glimmer of sad experience, that there are difficul- 
ties in this simple business of writing books which 
publishers will desire to print and the public to read. 
Many manuscripts are offered but few are chosen. 
How does one learn to cope with these difficulties 
and overcome them? How does one make ready 
to produce a manuscript which shall be reasonably 
sure of a place among the chosen few? By going 
to college, or by travel? By living in solitude, or 
in society ? By imitating select models, or by culti- 
vating a strenuous originality? By reading Plato, 
or The Literary Digest? 

Nobody seems to know the right answer to these 
questions. Guesses are made at them. Universi- 
ties announce courses in daily theme-writing. 
Schools of correspondence offer to teach the secrets 
145 



CAMP-FIRES 

of literature. Bureaus of Authorship are adver- 
tised. But the results produced by these various 
institutions are not consistent enough to be regarded 
as inevitable. Travel does not guarantee an ob- 
serving mind, nor solitude a profound one; nor 
does society always refine the inteUigence. The 
strenuous effort to be original often ends in a very 
common type of folly. Conscious imitation may 
be the sincerest flattery, but it rarely produces the 
closest resemblance. 

Meantime, a sufficient number of authors, great 
and small, continue to arrive, as they always have 
arrived, from their native regions, by their own 
ways. Ask them how they got there, and they can- 
not tell you, even when they try to do so. The 
reason is because they do not know. There was 
no pathway. They travelled as they could. Power 
and skill came to them, sometimes suddenly, some- 
times slowly, always inexplicably. 

Do you suppose it is possible to explain how 
Shakespeare became able to write "Hamlet," or 
Milton to compose "Paradise Lost"? It is true 
that George Eliot describes "how she came to write 
fiction," and Stevenson gives an entertaining sketch 
of some of the methods in which he pursued his 
146 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

"own private end, which was to learn to write." 
But does George Eliot herself understand the secret 
of her preparation to create her vivid, revealing 
"Scenes from Clerical Life"? Or will the study 
of those favorite authors to whom Stevenson says he 
"played the sedulous ape," enable the young short- 
story-tellers really to reproduce his inimitable style ? 

In the middle of the nineteenth century several 
learned, industrious, and wise Americans were de- 
livering lectures. Why did Emerson's crystallize 
into essays? Where did Hawthorne learn how to 
write "The Scarlet Letter," — in Bowdoin College 
or in the Salem Custom-house? Could Thackeray 
have told you how he found the way from "The 
Luck of Barry Lyndon" to "Vanity Fair," or 
Dickens from "Sketches by Boz" to "Pickwick 
Papers"? 

There is no other vocation of man into which 
"the unknown quantity" enters as largely as it 
does into authorship; and almost all writers who 
have won fame, even in a modest degree, if they 
are thoroughly candid, will confess to a not un- 
pleasant experience of surprise at their own suc- 
cess. 

Now all this implies an element of uncertainty 
147 



CAMP-FIRES 

in the author's profession, — ^if, indeed, a vocation 
so pathless may be called a profession at all. In 
the regular and, so to speak, macadamized pro- 
fessions, those who follow the road with energy, 
fidelity, and fair intelligence may count upon a 
reasonable reward. But in the open field of litera- 
ture it is impossible to foretell which one of a thou- 
sand aspirants will come to fame, or which ten will 
be able to earn a living. 

It is for this reason, no doubt, that some instinct 
of prudence, or some pressure of necessity, has made 
many authors provide themselves with another 
bread-winner than the pen. When we consider 
how many well-known and even famous writers, 
from Chaucer to Conan Doyle, have had some avoca- 
tion besides writing, we may justly conclude that 
there is hardly any human occupation, from diplo- 
macy to doctoring, in which the intending author 
may not learn to write, and from which genius, or 
even talent, may not find a passage into literature. 
Charles Lamb's labor as a clerk in the East India 
House did not dim the luminous wit of his essays. 
William De Morgan's long life as a manufacturer 
of tiles did not prevent him, at last, from making 
his novels "somehow good." The career of James 
148 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

Ford Rhodes as an ironmaster was no bar to his 
notable success as a historian. Indeed, it almost 
seems as if some useful occupation, or at least some 
favorite recreation or pursuit, to bring the writer 
into unprofessional contact with the realities of 
life and the personalities of other men, may be more 
of a help than a hindrance to vital authorship*.^ 

Writing, in itself, is not an especially interesting 
or picturesque employment. Romance can make 
little of it. Even when the hero of a novel is a lit- 
erary person, like Arthur Pendennis or David Cop- 
perfield, the things that interest us most happen 
to him outside of the book-room. It is what lies 
behind writing, and leads up to it, and flows into 
it, that really counts. 

The biography of an author is almost interrupted 
when he takes his pen in hand. 

Who would not ride with Scott on a summer raid 
through the Highlands, or walk with him and his 
dogs beside the Tweed, rather than watch him at 
work in the little room where he wrote " Waverley " 
by candle-light ? 

I think it was Byron who said something like 
this: "The moment in which a poem is conceived 
is one of infinite pleasure, the hours in which it is 

149 



CAMP-FIRES 

brought forth are full of the pains of labor." Of 
course I do not mean to deny that the author's 
vocation has its own inward delight and its own 
exceeding great reward. The delight lies in the 
conception of something that craves utterance: 
and the reward lies in the production of something 
that goes out alive into the world. A true call to 
the vocation of literature is both inward and out- 
ward: a strong desire of self-expression, ^nd a proved 
power of communicating thought and feeling through 
the written word. 

The wish to write merely for the sake of being 
a writer, if I may so describe a vague ambition which 
vexes many young persons, is rather a small and 
futile thing, and seldom leads to happiness, use- 
fulness, or greatness. 

Literature has been made by men and women 
who became writers because they had something 
to say and took the necessary pains to learn how 
to say it. 

But how did this happen to these men and 
women? What brought them to this happy pass 
where the inward call to self-expression was con- 
firmed by the outward power to interest readers.^ 
Who can tell? 

150 



THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 

It looks simple. And no doubt there is a certain 
element of simplicity in the necessary processes of 
learning to spell, to construct sentences, to use words 
correctly, to develop plots, to recognize rhymes, 
and to observe metres. But there is a mystery in 
it, after all. 

From Shakespeare's deepest tragedy to Kipling's 
most rattling ditty, from Wordsworth's loftiest ode 
to Dobson's lightest lyric, from Victor Hugo's big- 
gest romance to De Maupassant's briefest tale, 
from Plato's profoundest dialogue to Chesterton's 
most paradoxical monologue, from George Eliot's 
"Romola" to Miss Alcott's "Little Women," every 
bit of literature, great or small, has a measure of 
magic in it, and ultimately is no more explicable 
than life itself. 



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XI 

A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

fVE live in a i>eriod of historic pageants. The 
world, fatigued by the monotony of manners and 
dress which civilization is imposing on its once 
gaily variegated folks, seeks a brief escape from the 
tiresome prospect of a standardized humanity. It 
loves to recall for an hour the fanciful costumes and 
scenes, the dramatic and symbolic actions of the 
past. History lays aside her dusty dignity and 
goes into moving pictures. 

London and Paris revisualize their barbaric 
childhood and see themselves in the fierce conflicts 
and gallant enterprises of youth. Alfred repels the 
Danes, Charlemagne assembles his chivalry, William 
of Normandy conquers Britain, Columbus discovers 
America, Henry Hudson sails the Half Moon up 
Manhattan Bay, the Pilgrim Fathers set their pos- 
sessive foot on the stern and rock-bound coast of 
Massachusetts, the French monks penetrate the 
Middle West by the broad avenue of the Missis- 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

sippi, and the Spanish friars build their missions in 
California. 

The "first settlers" of North Hingham, and New 
Utrecht, and West Colbyville, and Calvinton, and 
Sauk City Centre, and Almadena, and many an- 
other place dear to its inhabitants, revisit the frail 
glimpses of glory and show their ancient garb and 
authority before their proud descendants. 

The local audience gleefully recognizes the fa- 
miliar performers in their unfamiliar guise. Old 
Bill Hodson as Columbus awakens applause which 
he never received as postmaster. Hi Waite, the 
plumber, makes an immense success as William 
Penn. Maude Alice Magillicuddy is ravishing as the 
Indian Princess with beaded leggings. The Rever- 
end Adoniram Jump is welcomed with hilarity as 
Bloodeye Ben the stern and deadly SheriflF. Multi- 
tudinous laughter, and cheering, and hearty hand- 
clapping run around the encircling throng. But 
behind the noise there is an eager attention, a seri- 
ous pleasure, a sense of imaginative satisfaction. 
The village, the town, even the conventional city, 
has been linked up for an hour with the wonderful 
past, in which strange things happened and the 
raiment of life was a Joseph's coat of many colors. 
153 



CAMP-FIRES 

Were events really so much more significant and 
entertaining in old times than they are jiow ? Or 
is it only an illusion of perspective, an illustration of 
the law that 

"the past must win 
A glory by its being far. 
And orb into the perfect star 
We saw not when we moved therein" ? 

WiD the people of 2000 A. D. look back to the era 
when the airplane and wireless telegraphy were dis- 
covered as the true and only age of romance ? Who 
knows? What difference? For us, in these com- 
plicated days, it is a delight to reverse our vision 
and see things pass before us in large outline, 
simpler and more striking, — ^perhaps truer, perhaps 
only easier to think we understand. 

One of the most vivid and delightful pageants 
that I have ever seen was in April of 1920, on an 
island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at the hun- 
dredth anniversary of Christian Missions in Hawaii. 
It was memorable not for its costly splendor and 
famous audience, but for the clearness and signifi- 
cance of its scenes and the wondrous beauty of the 
stage on which it was set. Moreover, along with the 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

pageant and around it, before and after, there ran 
an accompaniment which illuminated and empha- 
sized its meaning and added infinitely to its charm. 
Of this I will speak first. 

The Hawaiian Islands are the carrefour of the 
watery highways between East and West. Lay a 
course from Tokyo to Panama, from Vancouver to 
Melbourne, from Seattle to Singapore, from San 
Francisco to Manila, from Los Angeles to Hong- 
kong, and your lines will make a star in the sea not 
far from Honolulu. 

Two thousand miles away is the mainland of 
North America,^ — four or &ve thousand, the main- 
land of Asia, — ^far to southward, the sprinkled isles 
of Polynesia, — ^far to northward the rocky, frosty 
chain of the Aleutians. The vast sapphire solitude 
of the Pacific encircles the Territory of Hawaii with 
a beautiful isolation which the adventurous spirit 
of man has transformed into an opening for world- 
wide commerce. The lonely place has become a 
port of call for all nations. 

You must not think of these islands as a cluster 

of coral reefs, embowered in palms and sweltering 

under the rays of a tropical sun. They are a group 

of five, each one large enough to make a little state 

155 



CAMP-FIRES 

in New England or Euroi>e, and separated by wide 
stretches of seldom-quiet sea. 

From Oahu, the only island I visited, you can 
just see Molokai with the lofty peak of Maui be- 
hind it, like a lonely purple cloud on the horizon. 
Away to the southeast the big bulk of Hawaii,, 
where the volcanoes are still on active duty, is lost 
in distance. Away to the northwest the sharp peaks 
and cloven valleys of Kauai are invisible. 

But Oahu contains in itself the makings of a tiny 
complete continent. There are two ranges of real 
mountains, which rose from the bottom of the sea 
some twenty thousand years ago, "by drastic lift 
of pent volcanic fires." Wind and weather have 
carv^ed them into jagged ridges and pinnacles four 
thousand feet high. Between them lies the broad 
upland plain of Waialua and Ewa. The mountain- 
sides are furrowed by deep glens and ravines, 
sharpest on the northeast side where the rains are 
heaviest, gentler on the south and west where the 
vales spread out, fanlike, into the broad sugar- 
plantations of the coast, and the virid fields of 
springing rice. 

The foliage of the hills and valleys is wonderfully 
varied. The pale green of the kukui contrasts 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

vividly with the dark green of the koa and the ohia. 
Long avenues of sombre ironwood-trees with droop- 
ing threadlike leaves stretch beside the road. The 
huge banyans and monkey-pods spread their taber- 
nacles of pillared shade. The hau twists and twines 
its smooth trunks and branches into wide arbors, as 
if it were half tree and half vine. Stiff little papayas, 
with round, flat tops like parasols, lift their clusters 
of delicious fruit as high as they can reach. Plumy 
mangoes conceal rich treasure among their pendent 
foliage. Breadfruits expand their broad palmated 
leaves. The bright feathery green of the algaroba- 
trees (springing from a few seed-pods which a priest 
brought from the mainland in his pocket not many 
years ago) has flowed far and wide over the lowlands 
and slopes, making open groves where the cattle 
feed on the fallen beans, and tangled thickets full of 
needle-sharp thorns. 

For purely tropical effect there are the bananas, 
with broad bending leaves, always flourishing and 
generally dishevelled; and the palms, a score of 
different kinds, — ^the smooth columnar royal palm 
with green-gray trunk and bushy head high-lifted; 
the slender cocoa-palm with corrugated bole, often 
slanting or curving, and heavy fruit half concealed 
157 



CAMP-FIRES 

by its tousled fronds; the rough-bodied palmetto r 
and many another little palm of the kind that 
withers and pines in the hallways of our Northern 
houses, but here spreads its hands abroad and wres- 
tles gaily with the wind. 

The wind, — the wind, the glorious life-giving 
trade-wind is the good angel of the Hawaiian 
Islands. It is the only big wind that I ever 
loved. 

Nine months of the year it blows out of the north- 
east over the lapis-lazuli plain of the Pacific, bring- 
ing health and joy on its wings. The great white 
clouds come with it, like treasure-fleets with high- 
piled sails. Above the mountains they pause, 
tangled and broken among the peaks. They change 
to dark gray and blue and almost black. They let 
down their far-brought riches, now in showers as 
soft as melted sunshine, now in torrential douches of 
seeming-solid rain. But the big trade-wind still 
blows, drawing down the valleys, tossing the palm- 
fronds, waving the long boughs of the algarobas 
and the slender tops of the ironwoods, refreshing 
the city streets and the sun-warmed beaches, where 
perhaps not a drop of rain has fallen, rustling 
through the fragrant gardens, and passing out to 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

sea with a merry train of whitecaps. There you 
shall see him reassembling his snowy squadrons and 
flotillas of the air, driving them southward to re- 
fresh other thirsty islands. 

It is the trade-wind that accounts for the livable 
and lovable climate of Hawaii, in which a native 
race of extr.aordinary beauty and strength developed, 
and people of America and Europe and Asia can 
make their homes without loss of health or working 
vigor. The thermometer, elsewhere a recorder of 
weather-torments, here loses its terrors, for it moves 
between 60° for winter's cold and 85° for summer's 
heat. Even when the sun is most ardent there is 
always a breeze in the shade that will cool you gently 
without a chill. 

Honolulu is no siesta-city, where the shops are 
closed at noonday and the merchants retire to ham- 
mocks. It is a busy, thriving, modem town, which 
works full time every week-day, and where the 
telephone rings without ceasing. Its suburbs are 
reaching out Ewa way, Waikiki way, Nuuanu 
and Manoa way, threading house after house on 
the trolley-lines. It has a good water-supply and 
a clean harbor front. Best of all, its civic life has 
a core of intelligence and public spirit, embodied 
159 



CAMP-FIRES 

in men and women of missionary stock, who feel 
that they are citizens of no mean city, and are re- 
solved to have it look well and be well. 

Yet it is astonishing how unobtrusive the city 
is, how little it mars the landscape. I often found 
myself forgetting that it was there. Our friendly 
hosts lived in a house with broad lanai and long 
pergola, on the shoulder of one of the lower hills 
sloping down from Mt. Tantalus. Look out be- 
tween the royal palms on the terrace, and you will 
see the city almost submerged in a sea of greenery, 
like a swimmer floating on his back in tranquil 
waters. Beyond the long beach is a lagoon of trans- 
lucent aqua marina, and beyond that the silver 
curve of the surf on the coral reef, and beyond that 
the intense cobalt blue of the Pacific. To the left 
lies the fulvous shape of Diamond Head, like a lion 
couchani, looking out to sea. Farther to the east, 
and sweeping around into the north, rise the dark 
I>eaks of the Koolau Range, embracing the Manoa 
Valley. Here and there you see the roofs of houses 
among the trees, the long arcades of Punahou School, 
the white facade of the College of Hawaii, the many 
windows of the Mid-Pacific Institute, — (never a 
place with so many fine schools as Honolulu !). But 
160 



A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

for the most part it is a tree-top view, like that from 
the cottage in the last scene of "Peter Pan." 

Under the trees, and clambering over them, what 
flowers and vines ! Tall hedges of hibiscus all abloom 
with scarlet and white and rose and yellow of every 
shade: masses of climbing Bougainvillea covered 
with light purple or flame-colored flowers: fragrant 
plumarias with clusters of pale white, or ivory yel- 
low, or shell pink: lilies, milk-white or tawny orange: 
allamanda vines thickly set with rich golden trum- 
pets, and honeysuckles with coral red: oleanders, 
white and rose: acacias, drooping aureate plumes, 
or clustering pink blossoms like apple-trees in May: 
intense burning red of Poinsettia; heavenly blue of 
a tree whose name I do not know, but whose rare 
beauty I shall never forget. They tell me that later 
in the season the long wall around Oahu College, 
where the night-blooming cereus covers the stones, 
will break into a glory of white bloom. But I can't 
wait for that. 

The sea is as rich in colors as the land. The water 
changes its hues like peacock-feathers. The fish 
beneath it are vivid as if they had been dipped in 
rainbows. You may see them in glass tanks at the 
Aquarium, — ^weird, amazing creatures, some with 
161 



CAMP-FIRES 

long bills like birds, others with floating plumes 
and pennants, — streaked and striped and speckled, 
as if a mad painter had decorated them. I could 
not get rid of the feeling that they had been fabri- 
cated for the amusement of the visitor. 

But when I went on a picnic in the lonely, lovely 
bay of Hanama I saw them and caught them among 
the coral and lava rocks, at the foot of huge cliffs 
where the long waves rolled and broke in fountains 
of high-spouting foam. Those fish were quite as 
quaint as their cousins in the Aquarium: pale 
green, fringed with azure and banded obliquely 
with broad strips of black; bright blue, with orange 
fins, and on the sides a damascened pattern of mauve 
and apple-green; dark green, bordered with dark 
blue, and inlaid across the body with lozenges of 
crimson. 

I tell you we caught fish there that were abso- 
lutely incredible. I disbelieved in them even while 
they flapped upon the rocks. But one I firmly be- 
lieved in, — the golden giant, with a beak like an 
eagle's and a tail like a lyre-bird's, which the lady 
avowed she saw swimming disdainfully around her 
hook in the clear water. She angled for him with 
the patience of a saint, the hope of a poet, and the 
162 



A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

courage of a hero. The waves swirled about her 
knees; the spray dashed over her shoulders; her 
mind was firmly set upon that preposterous, scorn- 
ful fish. But she never caught him. That is why 
I believe in him. 

On the way home from our motor-rides we 
would stop at some convenient place, — oftenest at 
the long beach of Kahala, — ^and have a swim in the 
sea. The water was warm, and soft as silk. With- 
in the lagoon it was still, but on the reef beyond 
the big waves were roaring, (as Bottom says,) 
"gently as any sucking dove,'* Bathing in the 
Pacific is a pastime fit for Paradise. I trust that 
some equivalent substitute for it will be provided 
in that world where, St. John tells us, "There shall 
be no more sea." 

At Waikiki Beach we tried the surf-riding in a 
long, narrow, outrigger-canoe. You paddle out a 
quarter of a mile, beyond the breakers; then you 
wait for a big roller, — sl decuman, the Romans called 
it, believing that the tenth wave was always the 
largest. But the muscular Hawaiian boy who steers, 
(adequately clothed in a loin-cloth and his bronzed 
skin,) knows nothing of Latin superstitions. He 
feels by instinct when the roller is coming; swings 
163 



CAMP-FIRES 

the dugout toward the beach and gives a yell; every- 
body paddles hard; the water swells beneath us, 
rises, sweeps forward, breaks into foam; and the 
canoe is carried swiftly on the crest, smothered in 
spray, — ^impelled by an immeasurable force, yet 
guided straight by human will and skill, unable 
to turn back, yet safe in darting forward, — ^till the 
wave sinks in soft ripples on the sand. 

That is the joy of motion: to ride on something 
that is infinitely stronger than you, and yet to be 
the master of your course. It is the thrill of tobog- 
ganing, skate-sailing, air-planing, surf-riding, — to 
feel yourself borne along by the irresistible, but 
still the captain of your own little ship ! 

I have delayed too long, perhaps, in the descrip- 
tion of the scene and the accompaniments of the 
Mid-Pacific Pageant of which I set out to tell you. 
Yet here (and often elsewhere in the world,) the 
stage belongs to the play, and the decor is part of 
the action. 

In the spacious park of Punahou School, (founded 

by the missionaries,) there is a broad playground 

called Alexander Field, (given by the descendants 

of missionaries,) and behind this rises Rocky Hill, 

164 



A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

a considerable height, with grassy sloi>es strewn 
with blocks of lava, and a shallow valley in the 
centre, leading by easy gradations toward the sum- 
mit. 

The usual arrangement of an outdoor play is 
reversed. The audience and the chorus occupy 
the level: the actors move in the amphitheatre 
above them, going and coming by their palm- 
screened exits, — makaiy seaward, — mauha, toward 
the mountains. 

Seven hundred voices are in the chorus, gath- 
ered from various schools and colleges, including 
Hawaiians, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, 
Porto Ricans, and Anglo-Saxons. In the audience 
there seem to be ten or twelve thousand, scattered 
over the playing-field and the grassy slopes and 
terraces around it. The pageant represents the 
history of Hawaii for a hundred years, from the 
arrival of the first missionaries from New England 
in 1820, down to the present day. 

It is difficult to compress so long a period into 
so short a show. To tell the truth, there are some 
ancient ways and manners in the record which must 
be left invisible; and some modern episodes which 
the most raging realist would not care to put upon 
165 



CAMP-FIRteS 

the stage; and some political complications and 
intrigues which not even the most confidential chorus 
and the most elaborate tableaux could fully present. 
But the main story, the story of the things that 
really count and signify, is simple enough. Miss 
Ethel Damon has told it with admirable skill in 
her scenario and text; and Miss Jane Winne has 
preluded and accompanied it with excellent music. 

The i>erformance opens with Beethoven's "Hymn 
of Creation," rendered by the Hawaiian Band. 
Then comes a choral overture suggesting the ancient 
state of civil war on the islands, the unrest and 
confusion caused by the old tabu system, and the 
comparative unity and peace brought by the vic- 
tories of that beneficent tyrant, Kamehameha I, the 
Charlemagne of savages. Then comes the appeal 
to the imagination through the eyes, in color, move- 
ment, and human action. 

You must know a little about the history in order 
to follow the story closely, and to supply in imagina- 
tion the darker elements of human sacrifice and in- 
fanticide and drunkenness and debauchery which 
so nearly turned the Hawaiian drama into an irre- 
mediable tragedy. 

But even without this knowledge you can feel 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

the magic of the scene; the glorious setting of the 
play between the mountains and the sea; the little 
human shapes coming and going along the grassy 
trails, among the scattered rocks and wind-tossed 
trees; bare, brown arms and legs glistening in the 
sun, many-colored garments fluttering in the breeze, 
files and groups and crowds of men and women and 
children forming and dissolving around certain 
dominant figures, — a chapter of the human romance, 
unfolded on the breast of nature, beneath the open 
sky, in the light of the Eternal Presence. 

The first picture shows the royal state of Kame- 
hameha the Great, the native conqueror of the isl- 
ands. Ancient rites and customs are displayed: 
old women beating bark for ^apa-cloth, old men 
preparing poz, chiefs and chiefesses paying homage, 
commoners bringing their tribute of food and gar- 
ments, all prostrating themselves before the mon- 
arch; a procession of soldiers and priests, carrying 
tall standards of war and hideous idols, the ugliest 
and most sacred of which is the red god of battle; 
a great feast spread on the ground; hula-hvla danc- 
ing by beautiful damsels with mild reservations. 
It is a confused, barbaric scene, dominated by the 
tall old King in his cloak and helmet of red and 
167 



CAMP-FIRES 

yellow feathers. He is gloomy and unsatisfied, all- 
powerful and sad: his red god gives him no counsel 
for the using of his power. He vainly seeks enlighten- 
ment from his oldest priest and from one of the 
white men in his train. Silent and sombre, "the 
Lonely One" stalks off toward the sea, and the 
crowd melts away. 

The second picture shows the breaking of the 
ancient tabu system and the destruction of the idols. 
The new King, Liholiho, is afraid at first, but his 
reluctance is overcome by the Queen, and the Queen 
Regent, who is in effect the most powerful person 
in the islands. It is the women who have suffered 
most from the tyranny of tabu, which forbade them 
to eat with their fathers, husbands, or male chil- 
dren, and prohibited them from using the most 
nourishing foods, under penalty of death. Woman- 
hood rebels. The Queen eats a forbidden banana 
with her little son. Thus the tabu is badly cracked 
if not smashed. The Queen Regent argues, (and 
perhaps threatens,) with the King until he yields. 
The idols are thrown down, trampled under foot, 
bumed. The bands of ancient, cruel superstition 
are loosed. 

(But note here, reader, a strange fact unknown 
168 



A MID~PACIFIC PAGEANT 

to the audience. The native Hawaiian actors cast 
for the part of iconoclasts, alarmed by the mys- 
terious death of one of their number a few days 
before, declined to play the role of idol-breakers. 
Their place has to be supplied by Filipino and Chi- 
nese actors, whose subconscious minds have no 
roots of association with these particular images. 
Even in the twentieth century, as the Romans said 
long ago, "you can't expel nature with a pitch- 
fork," — nor with a pageant.) 

The third and fourth pictures show the arrival 
of the Christian missionaries from New England, — 
seven men and seven women, with five children, — 
and the beginning of their work. The crisis of peril 
in their first reception, the gentle persuasions by 
which they win a welcome and permission to stay, 
the busyness of their early days in teaching the 
gentle savages the rudiments of learning and the 
arts of peace, are well depicted. The contrast in 
dress between the styles of New Haven and of Hawaii 
in 1820 is striking. The compromise invented for 
the native women in the shapeless form of the ho- 
loku, (a kind of outdoor nightgown,) is not alto- 
gether successful, but brilliant colors save it. 
Conch-shells call the children to open-air schools. 
169 



CAMP-FIRES 

Spinning-wheels are brought out. Needles get 
busy. A great white cross is disclosed at the top 
of the hill. Allegorical figures of Faith, Hope, and 
Charity, clad respectively in blue, i>ale green, and 
rose chiffon^ flutter around, pretty and futile as 
allegorical figures usually are. The new era has 
begun. The details of hard work and struggle and 
danger and privation are written in the diaries and 
letters and records of the missionaries. Only the 
symbolic picture is shown here, — Christian love 
and courage setting out to rescue a generous, warm- 
hearted race from the degrading vices of so-called 
civilization without a religion, and to heal the poison- 
sores left by the fetters of hoary superstition. 

The most dramatic episode in the story is shown 
in the fifth picture. Kapiolaui, a noble princess 
of the islands, resolves to defy the goddess PeUi 
fierce mistress of undying fire, who dwells in the 
seething, flame-spouting crater of Kilauea. The 
princess, personated by a stately Hawaiian woman, 
climbs the crag on which a mimic volcano has been 
built. The volcano emits sufficient red fire and 
black smoke to suggest the terrifying reality to the 
imagination; The princess picks the sacred berries, 
which it is death to touch on the way up the moun- 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

tain, stands on the brink of the crater and eats them, 
scornfully tossing the stones into the lake of fire 
and crying "Jehovah is my God!" The great de- 
fiance is accomplished and the power of Pele over 
the souls of men is broken. Tennyson wrote one 
of his latest poems, Kapiolani, on this theme. 

(But remember, reader, what hapj>ened only a 
few years ago in the wonderful Bishop Museum, 
where the antiquities of the island are collected. 
A miniature heiau, — temple of the old gods, — ^was 
set up in the central hall. It was almost completed; 
council-chamber of the priests, enclosure walled 
with blocks of lava, black altar overshadowed by 
grinning idols,^ — all done but the slab for human 
sacrifice. A Hawaiian youth, working upon the 
roof, stepped by accident on the glass skylight of 
the hall, and fell through. His head was shattered 
on the altar, his blood stained the sands around it. 
Crowds of the Hawaiians came to look at the place. 
They shook their heads gravely and whispered one 
to another: "That was the only way, — no human 
sacrifice, no temple ! ") 

Come back to the pageant on the sunny hillside. 
The four remaining pictures display the reign of 
law under the Magna Charta of King Kam^hameha 
171 



CAMP-FIRES 

III; the development of modem industries; the 
union of Hawaii with America in 1898, and a review 
of the progress of a century. There is considerable 
allegory in the presentation; but the redeeming 
touch of reality is ever present in the fact that the 
chief actors are the descendants of the missionaries 
and of the Hawaiians whom they came so far to 
teach. 

In the last scene more than two thousand people, 
from all the Christian Schools and the so-called 
"constructive agencies** of all races on the islands, 
take part. With waving flags and many-colored 
banners they stream up the green hill. Forming 
a huge open triangle, with the point toward the 
great cross at the top, the living symbol hangs poised 
in the light of the descending sun. The palms wave 
and rustle in the breeze. The white surf murmurs 
on the distant reef. The blue Pacific heaves and 
sparkles far away. The light clouds drift across 
the turquoise sky. Over the fair stage and the 
finished pageant sounds Haydn's glwious hymn, 
"The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God.** 

Shall I leave my story of pictures, impressions, 
memories, and hopes in Hawaii, just there? What 
can I add to it that may not darken counsel by 
words without knowledge? 
172 



A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 

The beautiful territory in the sea is full of people 
now, gathered from many lands, speaking diverse 
tongues, and thinking different thoughts, — ^Ha- 
waiians, and half-Hawaiians, Caucasians, Filipinos, 
Koreans, Chinese, and one hundred and twenty 
thousand Japanese, — as many from Japan as from 
any four of the other races. Problems of race- 
mixture, of education, of capital and labor, of civic 
progress or reaction, of democratic government 
without class tyranny, must be met and solved. 

The people of Hawaii have their work cut out 
for them. The Government of the United States 
must stand by them steadily. There will be showers, 
storms, tempests of unrest; but I think there will 
be no cataclysm of destruction. The spirit which 
guided the missionaries will prove equal to its new 
tasks. And in due time there will be a new star, a 
bright tranquil all-Pacific star, in the flag of the 
United States of America. 



173 



XII 

JAPONICA 

The plan was to take Paula to Japan, in fuliSl- 
ment of a promise I made her when she was a little 
tiny daughter; to have a brief, glorious vacation 
there, with some collateral trout-fishing; and then 
to come home and write a luminous, comprehensive, 
conclusive monograph on the Japanese Problem. 

This well-laid plan went "a-gley." The first 
part of the programme rolled off splendidly. But 
now I come to the second part and find it can't be 
done. I know too much and too little. 

Japan is no longer a mere name to me: it is a real 
country, a wonderful land, a great nation. Its very 
simplicity makes it hard to comprehend and ex- 
plain. The Far Eastern Question is too large to 
be solved by an anthropological dogma, or settled 
by a snappy phrase. 

"The Yellow Peril" is an invention worthy of the 

yellow press. The writers who deal with this 

nightmare kind of stuflP, like Houston Chamberlain 

and Karl Pearson and the rest, are intellectual 

174 



JAPONICA 

neurotics, very jumpy and with a subconscious 
homicidal tendency. You would not trust them to 
run a mowing-machine or a trading-schooner. 
Rudyard Kipling was right in saying, 

"Oh, East is East, and West is West"- 

but was he right (except by metrics), in adding, 

"And never the twain shall meet"? 

In fact they have met already. The temporal re- 
duction of the spatial globe, the commercial am- 
bition of the West, the overflow of the crowded 
populations of the East, have already brought them 
together on a long line of contacts. The question 
now is how shall they live and work together so as 
to promote the welfare and true happiness of the 
world. 

This is not a question to be decided offhand, even 
by the youngest and most cocksure of anthropolo- 
gists. It must be worked out slowly, with patient 
good-will, and careful application of old, general, 
well-tried principles of reason and justice. Solvitur 
amhvlando. 

So I have joyfully jettisoned the idea of that con- 
vincing monograph on the Japanese Problem. Sit- 
175 



CAMP-FIRES 

ting here at the wide window of my little bunga- 
low on the Maine coast, looking out over fir-clad 
islands, blue sea, and mountain-shores (which re- 
mind me vividly of Japan), I shall only try to sketch 
a few memories of our journey in that delectable 
island. The title of the rambling paper is Japonica, 
which means, "things of or pertaining to Japan." 

TOKYO IN THE RAIN 

Coming into Yokohama in one of the fine Toyo 
Kisen ships, on a gray dripping day, we saw Uttle 
to interest us, except the home-coming joy of our 
Japanese fellow passengers, children and all. We 
wondered why they should love such a wet, drab 
country. 

Tokyo did not enlighten us. It is big without 
grandeur: a wide-spread, flat, confused city, with 
interesting and even picturesque spots in it, art 
treasures hidden in museums and private houses, 
some fifteen hundred Buddhist temples and Shinto 
shrines (a few of which are noteworthy,) a hundred 
and twenty-five Christian churches, and many 
gardens lovely even in the rain. 

The warm hospitality of the accompKshed Amer- 
ican Ambassador, the Japanese Foreign Minister, 
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JAPONICA 

the cordial missionaries of the great Methodist 
schools at Aoyama Gakuin, Doctor and Mrs. Corell 
of the Episcopal Church, and many other friends 
old and new; the comfort of the Imperial Hotel and 
the intelligent and informing conversation of its 
manager Mr. Hayashi, whom I had known years 
ago as a student in New York; the amusement of 
expeditions through the crowded, many-colored 
street called the Ginza; the pathetic interest of a 
visit to the huge shabby-splendid temple of Asakusa 
Kwannon, most popular of city fanes — these were 
consolations and entertainments for which we were 
grateful. 

But they did not quite lift us out of the depression 
of a rainy week in Tokyo. The air was dead, streets 
mud, cherry-blossoms fallen. So we determined to 
cut loose from the capital and go up to Nikko, 
weather permitting or not. 

RED TEMPLES AND TALL TREES 

Five hours on a comfortable railway carried us 
northward through a coastal plain of small square 
fields of rice and wheat, barley and millet, rape, 
radishes, onions, and taro, all carefully brought up 
by hand; then eastward, through a country of rising 
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CAMP-FIRES 

foot-hills with horizontal villages and farmhouses 
tucked away among the trees and every inch of 
valley-bottom cultivated to the limit; and so at 
last, through copses of cherry and maple and pine, 
splashed with rose-pink of wild azaleas, to the fa- 
mous avenue of tall Cryptomeria Japonica leading 
up to the scarlet shrines of Nikko. 

It is a small mountain town, whose name means 
*'sunny splendor," but whose glory is nested in 
coverts of evergreen shade. 

The red-lacquered bridge that springs with a 
delicate, effortless curve across the rushing Daiya- 
gawa at the upper end of the village, is too sacred 
for common use. Only Imperial Envoys and High 
Priests and Holy Pilgrimages twice a year may 
tread it. But they say that bold village boys on 
dark nights climb the secluding gates and scamper 
swiftly over the forbidden arch. 

The temples are all on the north side of the 
stream; terraced on the steep hillside that rises to- 
ward the snow-capped range of Nantai-san: em- 
bowered in a sacred grove more majestic than 
Dodona. The stately sugi, sisters to the giant 
sequoia of California, are the pillars of the green 
roof. Russet-trunked hinoki^ with cj'press-like foli- 
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JAPONICA 

age, and plumy retinosporas, are scattered through 
the forest. In the more open spaces are budding 
maples and birches. In the courtyards double- 
cherries are in radiant bloom. Far and wide the 
ground is spread with soft moss and feathery ferns. 
Amid all this natural splendor, so tranquil and so 
rich, the temples stand on their gray stone terraces, 
adorned with opulence of art and man's device. 

The prevailing color is a deep Indian red. But 
there is not a hue of the rainbow that is not lavished 
somewhere on carved rafter or columned gateway, 
pierced screen or panelled ceiling, treasure-house, 
baldachin, drum-tower or bell-tower. The spirit of 
the grotesque runs riot in the portrayal of unknown 
animals and supernatural beings. But realism has 
its turn in graphic portraits of familiar birds and 
beasts, like Sakai's twelve hawks, and the "sleep- 
ing cat" of Hidari Jingoro, which makes you drowsy 
to look at it. 

Nothing "towers" at Nikko, except the trees and 
the one stately vermeil pagoda. The temples are 
more broad than lofty. Their green-bronze roofs, 
curving gently outward, project in wide eaves. 
Their doors and beams and ridge-poles are adorned 
with bosses, rosettes, and hinges of gold or gleaming 
179 



CAMP-FIRES 

black metal. They have the effect of immense 
jewel-boxes, covered with decoration and crammed 
with treasures. 

God made the forest. Then man said, "Let us 
see what I can do." So he made the shrines. 

They are in effect the mausolea of two famous 
Japanese warriors and rulers. 

The eastern and more elaborate group is dedi- 
cated to leyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa 
clan, a great general, mighty hunter, and patron of 
the fine arts. He pacified Japan by killing his 
enemies in 1600, and began that long regime of 
seclusion and comparative tranquillity which lasted 
until the downfall of the Shogunate in 1867. 

The western group belongs to lemitsu, his grand- 
son, and is considered less important. To us it 
seemed no less attractive, perhaps because we went 
there on a sunshiny day, when the double-cherries 
were in glory around the old Futa-ara shrine, and 
the clear mountain rivulets were sparkling through 
the temple compound and overflowing the granite 
water-basins in thin sheets like liquid glass. 

Three days we spent in roaming up and down 
these terraces, through rain and shine; and all the 
time thousands of Japanese men, women, and chil- 
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JAPONICA 

dren, pilgrims or excursionists, were coming and 
going, gazing and wondering, listening devoutly to 
the discourse of their guides. 

The holy of holies of the leyasu temples was 
opened to us by special permit from the Abbot. It 
was so rich that I can't remember much of it. 

But I remember that outside the Honden was a 
little pavilion tenanted by an old-maidenish priest- 
ess, very small and dainty in crimson kirtle and 
snowy cap and surplice. At the request of visitors 
she would rise from her meditative seat on the floor 
and perform a quaint, decorous, graceful dance " to 
drive away the evil spirits." She was of an in- 
scrutable age; but a youthful soul smiled through 
the lattice of her gravity; her steps and motions 
were sure and supple. She carried a fan in one 
hand and a softly, silverly tinkling instrument in the 
other. These she waved toward us thrice at certain 
turns in the performance. It was fascinating. 

We came back when no one was looking and per- 
suaded her by silver inducements to do it again 
and again. Each time her smile was a little brighter. 
"I don't feel any evil spirits coming or going," said 
Paula, "but I simply must get the steps of that 

dance.'* 

181 



CAMP-FIRES 



HIGHLAND WATERS 



All around Nikko there are fine waterfalls, — a 
score of them within easy walking distance. In the 
mountains beyond there are many lakes, two of 
which have a certain renown. Chusenji, the larger, 
nearly 4,500 feet above the sea, is a modest summer 
resort. Yumoto, more than 5,000 feet up, is smaller 
and hardly frequented at all except for the hot sul- 
phur baths at the head of the lake. To these high- 
land waters we resolved to go. 

The motor road for some three miles followed the 
broad stony bed of the Daiya-gawa. There had 
been a spate a few days before, which carried away 
the smaller bridges. Gangs of coolies were deftly 
rebuilding them with bamboo as we passed. Pres- 
ently the valley narrowed, the road gave out, and 
we began to foot it on the 'rickshaw path. Steep 
cliffs overshadowed us. Cascades on tributary 
streams trailed their white scarves from shoulders 
of the hills. The path zigzagged up the mountain- 
side. Three or four rustic tea-houses, perched at 
convenient distances, commanded gorgeous views 
down the valley. The main river roared far below. 

But the memorable beauty of that breath-taking 
182 



JAPONICA 

climb was the flood of wild azaleas streaming down 
every hillside through the lace-leafy woods of early 
spring. From pale rose to deep flame, from rich 
mauve to faintest pink, their color shaded and 
shimmered, now massed along a level ridge, now 
pouring down a rocky slope — a glory no more won- 
derful, but more delicate and entrancing than the 
giant rhododendrons blooming along a Pennsylvania 
brook, or the high laurels beside a little river of 
South Jersey. 

Useless plants, all of them, except to the soul of 
man! 

Finally topping the crest, we came through a 
level wood of birch and maple, to the head of the 
famous Kegon Cataract where the Daiya-gawa 
rushes from the lake through a ten-foot rift in the 
rock, and plunges straight down two hundred and 
fifty feet into the churning pool below. The clouds 
of spray, the ceaseless thunder, the dizzying change 
of the fall from swift motion to seeming immobility, 
were bewildering and benumbing. Hundreds of hap- 
less Japanese lovers, bent on suicide, have thought 
this a fitting place to leap out of life into Nirvana. 

Chusenji is a lovely lake. High hills embrace it. 
Nantai-san soars above it. Bird-peopled woods en- 
183 



CAMP-FIRES 

circle it, except at the outlet, where there is a small 
village with half a dozen big Japanese inns on one 
bank of the stream and the Lakeside Hotel on the 
other. It is a comfortable hostelry — Japanese ex- 
terior, European furnishing. We were the only 
staying guests, and well cared for by the landlord 
and his whole family — including two little Breath- 
less Boys, who did everything on the full run, and 
made up for their blunders by smiling good-will. 

Yumoto is a very different lake, more Alpine, 
more surprising. It lies on the knees of the moun- 
tain-gods, like a beautiful fairy child. Primeval 
pine-trees form a dense grove round the lower part 
of the lake; steaming sulphur springs issue from the 
bare slopes at the upper end. At the very foot 
there is a tiny islet, dividing the clear green water, 
which drops straightaway over the cliflf in a broad, 
wrinkled, rippling curtain, like white watered-silk, 
two hundred feet long. 

In the green dell below, perhaps a hundred yards 
from the fall, a fine pool has formed, with a large 
foam-covered backwater on the opposite side of the 
stream. Arriving there at twiUght one evening in 
mid-May, after a seven-mile tramp, Paula and I 
could not bear to push on without trying our luck. 
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JAPONICA 

The three-ounce rod sent the tiny "Queen of the 
Water" and "Royal Coachman" fifty feet across 
the stream, to the edge of the foam. The white 
sheet was broken by the tail of a fish. A quick 
strike hooked him. He rushed gamely down the 
rapids, played hard for a good quarter of an hour, 
and then came to the net, — a, plump, American 
brook-trout of a pound and a quarter weight. Thrice 
the performance was repeated before the night fell. 
Then we climbed the steep ascent, and trudged 
over snow-drifts in the dark pine-wood, and through 
the sulphur-scented moorland, to the little Nanma 
Inn, where we found a warm Japanese welcome and 
had the whole doll-house at our disposal. 

Three days we fished that stream between Yu- 
moto and Chusenji, winding along the edge of a 
wild Alpine plain covered with reeds and bamboo- 
grass. The fish were plentiful, — ^rainbows, and 
fontinalisy and pink-finned native trout; but the 
water was too high and drumlie for fly-fishing. My 
average was fifteen fish a day. 

Our guide was a cheerful Japanese boatman 

named Ochiai, or something like that. He knew ten 

or twelve words of English, and was a passionate 

bait-fisher and a thorough gentleman. I remember 

185 



CAMP-FIRES 

the night when we arrived at the hamlet of Shobu- 
no-hama in a pelting storm. He introduced us to 
the humble cottage of a friend, where we sheltered 
beside the family-fire of charcoal while the boat 
was being prepared to take us down the lake. Hot 
tea was served, as a matter of course. When we 
scrambled down to the skiff, Ochiai brought up a 
dripping, apologetic peddler with a huge pack, and 
explained politely, — "Zis gent'man wet, — Chu- 
senji ? " We took him in, and the boatman sculled 
slowly down to the foot of the lake, while Paula-san 
and I sang college songs to keep ourselves warm. 

THE heart's capital OF JAPAN 

Kyoto, with its 450,000 inhabitants, lies in the 
fertile Yamashiro plain, ringed by green and lofty 
hills. For many centuries it was the seat of the 
Imperial Court, until Tokyo displaced it in 1868. 
But it still remains, I think, the chief city in the 
heart of Japan. 

Here the ancient arts and ways are more purely 
preserved; here the old traditions centre; here a 
visitor does not have to witness, as Lafcadio Hearn 
said in his last days of Tokyo, "the sorry sight of 
one civilization trampling the life out of another." 
186 



JAPONICA 

Mind you, I don't say that what is taking place in 
Tokyo and other great seaport towns is wrong or 
evitable. I only say that if you want the flavor 
and the tone of the original Japan, you must see 
Kyoto, and smaller cities of that type, and, above 
all, the countryside. 

We sp>ent a fortnight in and around Kyoto, with 
headquarters at the Miyako Hotel, where the con- 
versation of the manager, Mr. Hamaguchi, was 
delightful and illuminating. He told us the meaning 
of many things in Japanese life and philosophy, 
and best of all he advised us what to skip in our 
sightseeing. 

All kinds of pictures from that fortnight are stored 
in memory's "go-down." I can take out one after 
another and hang it on the wall, as a Japanese would 
do with his kakemonos. 

There is the famous Cherry Blossom Dance, in 
the biggest tea-house on the Kamo-gawa, where 
forty geishas weave intricate, slow designs of color 
and movement on the stage, while a double-dozen 
of women musicians twang samisens, slap drums, 
and chant weird nasal songs. There is the stately 
Noh Drama, performed on the century-old stage 
of the Nishi Hongwanji temple, by actors who have 
187 



CAMP-FIRES 

inherited their calling and traditions through genera- 
tions, — gorgeous costumes, symbolic action, classic 
dialogue, mostly tragic themes, with some con- 
secrated comic episodes, the chorus intoning a run- 
ning commentary, the absorbed audience following 
the play with their books, — it is a highly intellectual 
and at the same time eye-appealing performance, 
something like the revival of a Greek play at Ox- 
ford or Harvard, yet different as the East differs 
from the West. There are visits to a few well-chosen 
temples. The golden splendor of the great Chion-in. 
The tranquil charm of Kurodani on its shady hill, 
with its long inner corridors where the "nightingale 
floors" twitter beneath your stockinged feet, its 
rooms adorned with rare paintings and silken 
broideries, and its secluded garden where the iris 
is in bloom around the pond. The delicate beauty 
of the Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion in 
their landscape setting; and one little temple among 
the trees, whose name I never knew, but which 
Paula said she loved "because it seemed so lonely, 
and nobody told us to go there.'* 

Certain scenes and incidents are vivid in my 
mind. Visits to workshops, where deft Japanese 
fingers are busy with delicate work of tapestry, 
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JAPONICA 

damascene, lacquer, and carving. Preaching in the 
little Union Church, and lecturing to a thousand 
eager students at Doshisha University. Luncheon 
with Miss Denton of the Girls' School, that won- 
derful American lady who knows Kyoto better 
than the Japanese and whom they all love. "Cere- 
monial tea" at Doctor Saiki's house, where the 
gentle daughter of Nippon who performs the gracious 
ritual is the mother of nine and looks no older than 
one of her own children. 

Of all Kyoto days none was brighter than that 
on which we walked with the Shivelys over the 
sacried mountain of Hiei-san. The long trail up 
through the steep, stately forest; the ancient tem- 
ples and monasteries hidden on the heights where 
the fighting monks of Buddha used to assemble 
their bands to raid the capital; the basket lunch 
beside a cold streamlet in a glen below the summit; 
the rapid descent to Lake Biwa, with rapturous 
views on the way; the boat-ride home on the swift 
canal, half through a dark tunnel, half in broad 
evening sunlight, high on the hillside among wild 
azaleas, — that was a memorable day. 

But a single hour in another day stands out as 
clear. It was when I climbed with a Japanese friend 
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CAMP-FIRES 

to visit the Christian cemetery on the hillside above 
Nanzen-ji. The only approach is by a steep foot- 
path. Here, with others of like faith, confessed 
or secret, is buried Joseph Neesima, the father of 
Doshisha. From this quiet hillside no doubt he 
often looked down upon the great city spread out 
below him, and, like his Master, longed and yearned 
for its peace. Here he sleeps quietly, while his work 
goes on. 

TO THE CITY OF LANTERNS 

This was a roundabout journey which we made 
with a Japanese friend and scholar. Doctor Harada, 
as our genial comrade to guide us in the ways of 
Japanese inns and explain things seen and heard 
on the road. 

First we spent a day and night in Yamada-Ise, 
visiting the two chief shrines of the Shinto religion. 
Like almost all sacred places in Japan they have 
a splendid natural setting. 

Unlike Buddhist temples, however, the Shinto 
shrines are very simple, even austere. Built of 
plain wood, completely renewed every twenty years, 
without painting or ornament (except some brass 
fastenings with crests), they are distinguished by 
primitive features of their architecture, such as 
190 



JAPONICA 

the crossing of the end-rafters, which project above 
the roof like the poles of a wigwam. In the centre 
of the inner shrine hangs a mirror, the symbol of 
Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, worshipped as the an- 
cestor of the first Mikado and of the pure Japa- 
nese race. 

Shintoism is the old national religion of Japan, 
though there are many more Buddhists than Shin- 
toists, and the two faiths have been strangely crossed. 
The core of Shinto is ancestor-worship and patriot- 
ism. Mr. Hamaguchi said to me one night: "In 
China they worship their ancestors dead. In Japan 
we worship our ancestors through our children. 
Suppose youL want to move graveyard to make 
way for needed railroad. Chinese say, * Never, 
our ancestors forbid!' Japanese say, *Yes, move 
carefully, with reverence; railroad good for our 
children.' " 

You will usually find chickens kept at Shinto 
shrines, because of the cock that crows to make 
the sun rise. 

Next we went to Toba, a picturesque seashore 

town, known for its ship-builders, fishermen, and 

women pearl-divers. We took two of the divers, 

plump, good-humored little creatures, out to the 

191 



CAMP-FIRES 

fishing-grounds. They put on white caps and huge 
water-goggles, stood up and dropped their kimonos, 
and then slipped quietly overboard in their white 
cotton shirts and drawers, taking their floating 
tubs with them. After a little wheezing and many 
curious noises, they gave a sharp, indrawn whistle, 
turned over, and went down like small white seals. 
They brought up no pearls, but many lobsters, star- 
fish, sea-urchins, and other marine curios. The 
best pearl-fishing is at Mikimoto's place, a few miles 
farther along the coast. 

In the afternoon we climbed Weather Hill and 
had a view finer than that from Pemetic on Mt. 
Desert: eastward, Ise Bay and the swarm of islands 
and the blue Pacific; westward, a far-rolling sea 
of wild mountains and forests. 

Our last point was Gifu, the city of lanterns. Here 
they make delicious persimmon conftlures, delicate 
silk crape, the strongest paper in the world, fans, 
umbrellas, and paper lanterns light as soap-bubbles 
and lovely as campanula bells. We stayed at the 
"Well of Jewels Inn," and went out at night to see 
the celebrated cormorant fishing, a craft which 
has been practised here for more than ten centuries 
by the same families of fishermen. 
192 



JAPONICA 

The moon was rising over the mountains. The 
swift, clear river ran half glittering and half dark. 
Our barge was covered with an awning and lit with 
lanterns. We poled two or three miles up the river 
and found five other lanterned barges waiting be- 
side a gravelly bank between two rapids. I began 
to think it WQuld be a "tourist show," a fake. 

But a little before ten o'clock we saw moving 
lights up the river. Six fishing-boats came sweep- 
ing down with the current, an iron cresset full of 
blazing pine-knots projecting from the bow of each. 
We joined one of them and drifted with it. 

In front stood the master fisherman, a tall, 
bronzed youth, naked to the waist, with a long skirt 
of straw girt about his loins. The ungainly cor- 
morants, — ^black bodies, white throats, and hooked 
bills, — stood along the gunwale, six on a side. A 
ring of fibre around the lower part of the neck pre- 
vents the bird from swallowing fish irrecoverably, 
and a fibre rein twelve feet long serves to guide and 
retrieve him. The fisherman pushes the team off 
in order, the captain last. Then they dive, swim 
under water with feet and wings, dart hither and 
thither ahead of the boat, come up again and 
again with a ^we or six inch trout held crosswise in 
193 



CAMP-FIRES 

the bill, gulp it down, dive again, and keep on till 
their pouches are full. Then the master, clucking 
and whistling to his team, lifts one bird after an- 
other to the gunwale, taps him on the throat to 
make him give up his catch, and drops him over 
once more. 

So we drifted on with splashing, shouting, singing, 
the torches flaring, the birds eager and skilful, the 
master deft and imperturbable, until we came to 
the end of the fishing-grounds. Then the birds 
had their collars taken off and were plentifully fed 
with the smaller fishes, and we all went home. The 
catch that night must have run well up in the thou- 
sands. We had some the next morning for break- 
fast, — delicious. Paula said, — ^well, no matter what 
she said. They were perfectly good pink fish. 

TOKYO REVISITED 

Our second week in Tokyo was more serious and 
joyful than the first. The sun was shining, the air 
revived. There were social engagements of a real 
pleasure. A snug tiffin with Secretary Hofer in 
his new bachelor house; a fine banquet (with theat- 
rical entertainment), given me by six of my former 
Japanese students at Princeton, in the Maple Club; 
194 



J A P ON I C A 

an academic luncheon presided over by Baron 
Yamagawa, President of the Imj>erial University, 
in the Botanical Gardens; a delightful, friendly 
feast made for us by Madame Yukio Ozaki (wife 
of the eloquent parliamentary leader, and author 
of those delightful English volumes, "The Japanese 
Fairy Book" and "Romances of Old Japan"), at 
the "Inn of Ten Thousand Pines," by the Sumida- 
gawa; a brilliant dinner with Mrs. Charles Burnett, 
a gifted American lady who lives very close to the 
heart of Japan, and whose charm brought to meet 
us a choice group of scholars and statesmen, men of 
letters and affairs. 

In such company one has glimpses of what Japan 
really desires and seeks. I am convinced that it is 
not war, but peaceful, orderly development, and 
that Japan is the natural leader for this task in the 
Far East. 

There were also academic engagements which 
involved work. A lecture at Waseda University, 
founded by Japan's "grand old man," the Marquis 
Okuma; an address at the fortieth anniversary of 
the Tokyo Y. M. C. A.; two lectures at the Im- 
perial University, the first to be given on the "House 
Foundation"; a luncheon and lecture at the Wo- 
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CAMP-FIRES 

man's University, where we had a hearty wel- 
come from the president and all the staff and stu- 
dents. 

The attitude of the Japanese toward education 
is fine. In the public schools the enrolment and 
attendance are 95 per cent. You see the well-trained 
children on excursions with their teachers every- 
where, learning to see and know Japan first. In 
the universities the eagerness for knowledge is keen, 
— so keen that perhaps it sometimes turns its own 
edge. Know-it-all is a good dog, but Know-it-welL 
is a better. 

The Japanese, in fact, have many of the Amer- 
ican virtues, — and faults. To think or talk of them 
as "brown monkeys" is distinctly asinine. They 
have an ancient civilization; a wonderful art and 
literature; a unified race whose spirit has never 
been broken by foreign conquest or domination; 
a habit of industry and great gifts of manual skill; 
endurance, ambition, versatility, and a sensitive 
temper. They laugh much, love their numerous 
and delightful children, and have a firm and pas- 
sionate faith in the future of their country. They 
are almost as political-minded as Americans, and 
quite as honest as any other commercial people. 
196 



JAPONICA 

One word more. What about the Pacific Coast 
and Japanese Immigration? 

Only this ! 

It is a difficult question. Within limits, I think 
the Pacific Coasters must settle it for themselves. 
If they do not want Japanese labor they need not 
have it. If they want it they must treat it on the 
principle of "the square deal." 

The Califorhians must remember that the Pacific 
has two Coasts. The friendly co-operation of Great 
Britain, the United States, and Japan is essential 
to peace and order in the Far East, where our na- 
tion has some possessions and many interests. And 
the natural leader in the Far East is Japan, because 
she has what China lacks, the instinct of self-or- 
ganization. 



197 



XIII 
INTERLUDES ON THE KOTO 



THE RED BRIDGE AT NIKKO 

Over the hurrying torrent of Daiya-gawa, 
Calmly I bend my bow of beauty, 
Curving from pillar to pillar of granite. 
Tranquil in the pride of perfection, — 
I am the Queen-rose of all bridges. 

I tremble not with the fury of the current; 
The turbulent river cannot reflect me, 
Nor carry away my lovely image. 

Holy and proud, I am often lonely, 
When I hear on the common bridge below me 
The pattering feet of people going to and fro. 
And the merry laughter of little children. 

Come in the night, you wild young boy. 
And leave me not untrodden. 
198 



INTERLUDES 
II 

CANDELABRA 

I LOVE the wonder-working fingers 

Of Springtime in Japan! 

She weaves a priestly robe of green for Nature, 

And broiders it with white and rose and gold. 

She lifts the veil of snow 

From the beautiful mountain-shoulders. 

She fills the holy places of the forest 

With psalms and canticles of praise. 

Incense of fragrant leaves and blossoms 

Floats from her footsteps in the temple. 

Where are the candelabra for the altar? 

Behold, the fingers of Springtime have prepared 
them! 

She has wrought silently in the midnight; 

Bending the dark bronze boughs of the pine-trees 

Outward and upward in lines of beauty. 

On the tips of all the branches, straight and slen- 
der. 

Silvery candles are set in millions, — 

Every one standing upright, 

Every one touched with the white flame of life ! 
199 



CAMP-FIRES 
III 

THE REPOSE OF NARA 

On the knees of the ancient mountains 
Guarding the old Yamato plain. 
Weary of long war and tumult. 
Beautiful Nara climbed up to rest. 

The green sugi and red-bodied hinoki 
Shelter her temples with curving branches: 
April heaps white blossoms among them, 
October lights them with lanterns of a million 
maples. 

Droves of dappled deer find sanctuary in Nara; 
Processions of pilgrims and singing school chil- 
dren 
Wander and wonder through her groves. 
While the great bell of Buddha 
Booms the passing hours of peace. 

Last of all come the refugees of Russia, 
Flying from the fury of the Red Terror. 
Dai Nippon, whom they once despised and hated. 
Welcomes them to the repose of Nara. 
They are like people walking in their sleep; 
Happy, if in this dream they find truth! 
200 



INTERLUDES 
IV 

PROMISE-TIME 

If Springtime were the only time 

It would not be so dear, — 
The budding-time, the mating-time. 

The promise-time o' the year. 
But Summer comes with ripening heat. 
And Autumn with her wine-stained feet. 
And Winter to his fireside seat 

Doth cheerily call: 

Yet still the dearest time of all. 
Is the time when nothing is complete, — 
The time when hope and longing meet, — 
The promise-time o' the year. 

V 

MALGRE CELA 

Never Summer fair as Spring foretold. 
Never Autumn rich as Summer willed it. 
Never Winter gleaned all Autumn's gold, 
Never Spring so late that Winter killed it. 



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CAMP-FIRES 
VI 

WILD AZALEAS 

When the bloom of the cherry is gone from the 
gardens 

And all their white flower-drifts have melted away, 

Then the wild azaleas begin to flow down the hill- 
sides, — 

Rivers of rose through the morning-misty wood- 
land, 

Pools of tranquil flame under the evergreen-trees. 

VII 

THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN 

While the broad-boughed pine braves the ocean 

gale, 
And the bamboo bends to the breath of the vale. 
And the cherry dazzles the April air 
With a snow of beauty everywhere, — 
The Yamato spirit shall endure. 
In beauty, grace, and strength secure. 



202 



XIV 

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES IN 
DEMOCRACY 

Democracy is a word variously employed. 
It signifies a government, a theory, a way of living, 
and (like Boston) a state of mind. In the United 
States of America it is also used, and capitalized, 
to denote one of the two political parties which 
alternately control and criticise the conduct of the 
state. With this last meaning the present essay 
does not deal. 

Toward the four other significations of democ- 
racy I stand thus. As a state of mind it is whole- 
some: as a way of living it is convenient, although 
not always the most comfortable: as a theory it 
is admirable with mild reservations: as a mode of 
government it is the most promising yet devised 
by man. 

This is not as much as to say that it is always 
possible or even desirable for all nations at all stages 
of their growth. What has been written by Rudyard 



CAMP-FIRES 

Kipling of the Bandar-log or commonwealth of 
monkeys is pertinent also to the Boob-rah or regime 
of the ignorant by force of numbers. 

But granting a moderate degree of self-knowledge 
as a preparative for self-determination, and a 
reasonable consent to those natural and moral laws 
which cannot be altered by popular vote, prob- 
ably democracy offers more to man than any other 
way of regulating his common affairs. 

It is costly in discussion and debate; but by way 
of recompense it promotes general intelligence and 
the most Christian virtue of patience. It is sub- 
ject to errors; but it has the merit of bringing home 
the responsibility to those who make the mistakes; 
for where all decide, all must share the consequences. 

Under a rule in which you yourself partake, weak 
complaining is a form of self-reproach, violence is 
treason, and the only wisdom of the discontented 
lies in the continued effort to bring the majority 
to a better choice. Thus democracy, rightly con- 
sidered, has in itself something bracing, salutary, 
and educative. 
' "Government of the people, by the people, for 
the people," as Lincoln ennobled it in his imperish- 
able phrase, has a superior quality in its ideal of 
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TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

perfection. Even in its imperfection, (and as yet 
the world has seen no more,) it outranks the other 
methods of government by its ultimate intention 
of appeal to reason and the right mind in man. 

Thus avowing my democratic convictions, and 
thanking God that he has cast my lot under a gov- 
ernment which derives its just powers from the 
consent of the governed, I feel bound, (and at lib- 
erty,) to confess my hesitations and doubts con- 
cerning the modern presentation of democracy as a 
substitute for religion. 

It is a good thing, no doubt: but not so good as 
all that. It has the defects of its qualities. Its 
possibilities carry its perils. Subject to the infirmi- 
ties of its makers, it needs a corrective and a guide. 
I It is as wise and just as mankind, — ^no more. 

Perhaps they are right who say that it has more 
of wisdom and justice than any one man can ever 
have. But even that collective sum is not enough. 
For human wisdom has its sharp enclosing ring; 
and when we pass that, we do but find another 
horizon. Human justice has a twist in it, being 
warped unconsciously by our fond blindness to our 
own blame, and our failure to feel the needs which 
may explain, if not excuse, the faults of others. 
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CAMP-FIRES 

This double defect is as common in juries as in 
judges. 

To praise democracy overmuch is to invite a 
scrutiny of its mistakes. To trust it beyond its 
ability to perform is to court the loss of all our 
confidence. 

Do not overload the ship which carries your hope. 
Vox populiy vox deif says the proverb. Yes, but 
what god is it that thus speaks? An idol of the 
market-place, or the True and Only ? 

You might think that the new religion proposed 
by Auguste Comte, — Ctilte systSmatique de VHu- 
manitSy — ^would have been popular. Not so! For 
the enthusiasm of the multitude for itself, though 
violent for a time, is transitory. The hot fit passes 
into the cold. 

The crowd, when not hypnotized by the spell- 
binder, or inflamed by the demagogue, mistrusts 
itself even more than the philosopher who knows 
the common sense which lives within its limitations. 

The man in the crowd, pressed and incommoded, 
is conscious mainly of the deficiencies of his too near 
neighbor, and whispers to himself, "Am I to be 
governed by the likes of you ? " 

You may often hear one say, in mock-modest 
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TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

self-depreciation, that he belongs to the rank and 
file. But in his heart he does not place himself en- 
tirely there. He thinks he is a little different, stands 
somewhat apart, a bit higher. 

This is why even popular writers do not fear to 
abuse the multitude, to pour scorn upon it, to buffet 
it with hard words. They know that none of their 
readers will take offense, because none will think 
that he really belongs to the multitude. 

Thus Emerson, high-handed republican that he 
was, wrote in his "Considerations by the Way": 
"Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, 
but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything 
to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them 
up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst 
of charity is, that the lives you are asked to pre- 
serve are not worth preserving. Masses ! the 
calamity is masses. I do not wish any mass at all, 
but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished 
women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, 
gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. 
If government knew how, I should like to see it 
check, not multiply the population. When it reaches 
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CAMP-FIRES 

its true law of action, every man tliat is born will 
be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of 
masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single 
men spoken on their honor and their conscience. 
In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote 
of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. 
I think it was much underestimated. *Clay and 
clay differ in dignity,' as we find by our preferences 
every day. What a vicious practice is this of our 
politicians at Washington pairing off ! as if one man 
who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, 
who mean to vote right, for going away; or as if 
your presence did not tell in more ways than in 
your vote. Suppose the three hundred heroes of 
Thermopylae had paired off with three hundred 
Persians; would it have been all the same to Greece, 
and to history ? " 

Now whether this be an example of what George 
Meredith calls a "rough truth'* or not, I cannot 
say; but it is certainly a specimen of plain dis- 
course. One would like to know after what election 
in Massachusetts Emerson wrote it, or whether it 
was conceived after a confabulation with Carlyle in 
his "Ercles* vein." 

But at one point,— the last, — Emerson leaves his 
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TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

belaboring of the unconscious masses, and turns to 
thwack a far more sensitive class, the politicians. 
And that, forsooth, on the score of their old-estab- 
lished, highly honored, and generally practised cus- 
tom of pairing off ! Here is candor to the verge of 
rashness! I reckon, calculate, and guess the sage 
of Concord heard from his representatives at Wash- 
ington about that rude assault. Thus I hear them 
talk: 

* Shall not a weary Congressman or Senator pair 
off when he has important business of his own to 
attend to, and when a vote on one side practically 
cancels and annuls a vote on the other.? Instead 
of being blamed, should he not rather be praised 
for having taken the pains to arrange a pair be- 
fore forsaking the high halls of republican coun- 
cil .f* Is not this a pestilent idealist who ventures 
to set up a higher standard of duty than the con- 
venience or interest of the men who have been 
honored, and so to speak promoted to a kind of 
nobility, by the people's choice ? * 

A specious defense ! Yet Emerson was right. 

The point he makes against the pairing politicians 

is that their mating of opposites is productive of 

mere negation; it is a barren match. And this, 

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CAMP-FIRES 

mark you, because it proceeds upon the false as- 
sumption that voting is the highest if not the sole 
function of man in a democratic state, and that 
all votes are equal, not only in the numerical count, 
but also in worth and significance. 

This assumption, if granted, would be fatal to 
true democracy. It would level down, not up; ren- 
der the appeal to reason and the right mind nuga- 
tory; and consecrate the Teller as High-Priest of 
the God of Numbers. 

Yet it is precisely the democratic state that seems 
to breed this self -destroying fallacy most frequently 
and to its own hurt. One maUy one vote, is the mod- 
ern "slogan." (Silly word, beloved by advertisers 
of ready-made clothing and cosmetics, I use thee in 
derision !) As a protest against proved inequities 
of suffrage, like plural voting and the disfranchising 
of women on the ground of sex, the saying has its 
portion of truth. But push it beyond the mark, 
infer from it that, because the privilege of voting 
works best when equally conferred on all citizens, 
therefore all citizens and all their votes have an 
equal vital value, and you propagate an absurdity 
which not even the rugged digestion of democracy 
can endure. 

210 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

In old Calvinton, when I was young, we had a 
professor who was a saint, a sage, and a joy to the 
heart. Every one in the town knew and loved him. 
As he rode along the main street in his little one- 
horse carryall on election day, we would say, "There 
goes the old Doctor to vote the Republicratic 
ticket.'* When he had deposited his ballot, he would 
come out, climb into the back seat of the wagon, and 
smilingly hold the reins, while his Irish coachman 
went in to exercise the proud privilege of suffrage. 
As Pat emerged from the polls, he would grin, and 
whisper behind the back of his hand to the by- 
standers, "Begorrah, oiVe just nulligated ould 
Docther's vote!" But had Pat done as much as 
that.? Neither he himself nor the laughing by- 
standers really thought so. There was something 
in the example of the wise old Doctor faithfully 
performing a simple duty of citizenship that counted 
far beyond the ballot he had dropped in the box. 
It could not be equalled save by a man of equal 
wisdom and character. 

Why, then, should those who prefer a democratic 

form of government and beheve in one man, one 

vote, as the best means of securing it, surcharge their 

faith with inferences which are manifestly false; 

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CAMP-FIRES 

like the dogma that all men have equal worth and 
influence because they have an equal right to "life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The founders 
of our republic neither held nor practised that inane 
creed. 

Such an excessive orthodoxy has all the vices of 
a heresy. The preaching of it, either in serious 
fanaticism or for campaign purposes, injures and 
imperils the republic. It is, in effect, an illustration 
of the theme which I have been meditating by this 
month's autumnal camp-fire, — suicidal tendencies 
in democracy. 

By this phrase I do not mean carefully matured 
purposes of self-destruction; nor even sudden im- 
pulses and resolves which have that end clearly 
in view as a risk. They do not fall under either 
head of Blackstone's definition oi felo de se as one 
who "deliberately puts an end to his own existence, 
or commits any unlawful act the consequence of 
which is his own death." 

The tendencies of which I speak are marked by 
a lack of deliberation. Nor can they be called un- 
lawful acts, since the body which commits them has 
authority to make them legal. They have for the 
most part the quality of unconscious self-betrayal 
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TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

and inconsistent action, — the harboring of views 
and the forming of habits which carry seeds of de- 
cay and presages of dissolution for the democratic 
state. And these are at their worst, most secret 
and perilous, precisely in those times and countries 
where the democratic theory is presented as a sub- 
stitute for religion, and the ancient heresy that 
"the king can do no wrong" is twisted to read "the 
sovereign people can make no mistakes." 

This dogma of popular infallibility goes directly 
in the teeth of experience, and cancels that wise 
and needful maxim of the Hebrew common- 
wealth, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do 
evil." 

A thoughtful consideration of the self-begotten 
errors and morbific propensities which brought 
about the downfall of such democracy as existed 
in Athens, in republican Rome, in revolutionary 
France, and more recently, for a few months, in 
unhappy Russia, dreaming of freedom and walking 
straight into the ditch of Soviet slavery, — such a 
study would yield matter for a book of profitable 
warnings. But for our present purpose of a camp- 
fire talk, (with side-reference to guide-posts,) there 
is no need to go so far back or afield. There are 
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CAMP-FIRES 

plenty of small instances and significant illustrations 
close at hand in these States, where democracy has 
found its greatest opportunity. 

THE REFERENDUM HABIT 

- What shall we say, for instance, of the tendency 
to supersede the considerate processes of repre- 
sentative government by submitting complicated 
questions which require long thought and enlight- 
ened judgment, to the direct, immediate yes-or- 
no vote of the masses? Calling it a referendum 
does not alter its nature. It is a demand upon 
the multitude for what the multitude has not 
got and cannot deliver, — expert knowledge on a 
variety of subjects and a careful solution of intricate 
problems. Or else it is an attempt to get rid of the 
burden of responsibility by throwing it upon the 
untrained shoulders of the people. 

A California woman has told in a recent maga- 
zine the unconsciously pathetic story of her first 
experience at the polls in her glorious native State. 
She was confronted, a few weeks before the elec- 
tion, with a vast, portentous referendum which 
summoned her to stand and deliver her judgment 
on forty-two points of public policy. (I think that 
214 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

was the number, but a few more or less would make 
no difference.) This conscientious and heroic woman 
shivered, studied, struggled, did her best to perform 
her enormous duty in a more than manful way. 
But at the end she was rather in the dark as to just 
what she had done, and the joy of her first vote 
was troubled by spasms of dubiety. 

Lowell wrote: "Direct intervention of the people 
in their own affairs is not of the essence of democ- 
racy"; and further: "The founders of our democ- 
racy put as many obstacles as they could contrive, 
not in the way of the people's will, but of their 
whim." That is sound doctrine. 

Real reform and progress in politics must be ac- 
complished bit by bit. Sudden revolutions may 
succeed, but do not prosper. 

To change i>ersonnel, machinery, and methods in 
a factory at one sweep, is usually fatal. New men, 
machines, and processes, must be brought in by 
degrees. It is only in her destructive work that 
Nature operates by the catastrophic method. 

The referendum, no doubt, has its use and justi- 
fication in certain cases, — in matters which have 
been long discussed and are generally understood; 
— ^in questions which are clear and definite and 
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CAMP-FIRES 

admit of a categorical answer, — ^will you or won't 
you have it so? Even then, I think it takes its 
best form in the choice of representatives who stand 
definitely on one side or the other of the clear ques- 
tion at issue. 

The formation of the indiscriminate, indolent, 
universal referendum habit in a democracy looks 
to me like a vice with suicidal tendency. 

LEGIMANIA 

Another bad habit which seems to endanger the 
security, or at least the sound health of a democ- 
racy, is the propensity to make too many laws on 
too many subjects. 

Somewhere in my filing-cabinet I have the 
statistics in regard to the number of laws enacted 
by the legislatures of New York, California, and 
other States, in a single recent year. It runs well 
up into the thousands; and if you add to it the 
Acts of Congress passed in the same time, you have 
a sum total which represents a solemn revel of legi- 
mania. 

'Tis as if a doctor should seek to win resi)ect and 
confidence by the extraordinary number of his pre- 
scriptions, or a schoolmaster to establish discipline 
216 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

by multiplying his rules. The thing cannot be done 
in that way. 

Doubtless some of these laws are wise and need- 
ful. Probably most of them are well meant. They 
have a good heart, as the saying goes. It is in the 
head they are lacking. And so in practice many, 
of them produce either no effect at all, or the con- 
trary of what was intended. 

Not even the Puritan Fathers in their palmiest 
days went as far in sumptuary legislation as some 
of our modern regulators would have us go. 

Of old, men were rebuked by the Divine Master 
for asking continually, "What shall we eat, and 
what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
clothed.'^" Nowadays it seems to be no reproach 
to be asking continually, "What food and drink 
and raiment shall we permit our neighbors to 
use?" 

"You can never make men virtuous by legisla- 
tion," said the Bromidian Philosopher. "Perhaps 
not," replied the Acidulous Reformer, "but I can 
make them — uncomfortable." 

It is a historic fact that the American form of 
government has as its basis and its aim, liberty, — 
the largest amount of liberty in action for the in- 
217 



CAMP-FIRES 

dividual that is consistent with a due regard for 
the libierties of others. To abandon that basis is 
to impair the stabihty of the republic: to renounce . 
that aim is to deprive democracy of one of its main 
appeals to the common sense of mankind. 

As few rules as pK)Ssible, but those well enforced: 
that is the regime of wisdom and strength. 

You can never secure by popular vote that which 
is not supported by public opinion. 

The tyranny of a meddlesome majority is as ob- 
noxious as the interference of a capricious king. 

The democracy that goes beyond its duty of abat- 
ing public nuisances and protecting public health, 
to indulge its illusion of omnipotence by regulating 
private affairs, weakens its own power by over- 
straining it. 

The craze for superlegislation in a democratic 
state has a suicidal aspect. It undermines author- 
ity, lessens respect, and begets a brood of resentful 
evasions under the smooth apron of hypocritical 
compliance. 

FICKLENESS 

We expect the masses to be fickle, and they sel- 
dom disappoint us. But when that frivolity of 
218 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

mind takes a violent form and swings to the alter- 
nate "falsehood of extremes," it becomes dangerous 
to the state. 

Republics are always looking for heroes and al- 
ways pulling them down. How many Washingtons 
and Lincolns has America discovered, only to revile 
them afterward as would-be Csesars! A study of 
newspaper cartoons from the Jacksonian period to 
the present would show the head of many a good 
and faithful servant of his country encircled with 
the mocking laurels of imperial ambition. 

It is a bad habit of democracy to oscillate be- 
tween adoration and abuse. When Admiral Dewey 
came home from his famous victory at Manila Bay, 
nothing was too good for him; he was a second 
Nelson, the savior of his country, worthy of the 
highest place. But a few months later, when he 
quite properly made his wife a wedding present of 
the house in Washington which the public had given 
to him, (thinking, honest man, that as he and she 
were one, the sharing of the gift was natural,) the 
fickle populace could find nothing too bad to say 
of him. He could not have been elected to a seat 
in the House of Representatives, to say nothing 
of the Presidential Chair. Yet he remained just 
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CAMP-FIRES 

what he always was, a great, quiet, naval com- 
mander. 

Death has a way of silencing these violent reac- 
tions in the people. It is only a few among the 
journalists who cherish the malice of their oppug- 
nancies and pursue the men whom they have scorned 
into the grave. For the public at large, the vanish- 
ing of the contestant from the field of partisan strife, 
means a calmer and deeper vision of the man and 
his services. I know more than one New York 
clubman who used to swear profanely at the mere 
mention of Roosevelt's name while he was alive, 
who walked among the mourners at his funeral 
when that strong and valiant soul was gone. 

Most assuredly this habit in democracy of first 
blindly adoring and then cruelly abusing its public 
men while they are in life is a suicidal trait. The 
danger of it is twofold. 

Some day an idol of the public may come along 
who is really a Napoleon or a Lenin in disguise; 
and then, — ^good-by, democracy. That is one dan- 
ger. 

The other is quite the reverse. Many a day the 
republic imperils the usefulness of a noble servant, 
cripples him or maims him for the time, by the ex- 
220 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

travagance of partisan scorn and vituperation. 
This also is madness and folly, vanity and a striv- 
ing after wind. 

Even worse than fickleness in regard to heroes 
is the democratic propensity to shift and veer on 
matters of public policy. It is a habit of minor 
politicians to maintain their leadership by follow- 
ing what looks like the crowd. 

I remember a certain President of whom it was 
often said that he had his ear to the ground. " Watch 
him closely," a shrewd critic said to me, "and be- 
fore long you'll see dust on the other ear." 

What does it signify when at a certain time there 
is general enthusiasm in America for a league of 
nations to maintain peace and the leaders of both 
parties cry out that it is the hope of the world, and 
then, two years later, the enthusiasm has cooled 
and half of the leaders exclaim that such an idea is 
preposterous, impossible, a menace to the world, 
and to the United States in particular? This also 
is vanity and a striving after wind. 

What does it signify when at one time the Monroe 
Doctrine is extolled as the Palladium of our safety, 
and at another time the proposal to give it a recog- 
nized standing in international law is refused with 
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CAMP-FIRES 

mockery ? when men claim effusively that the United 
States is now a world-power, and soon afterward 
shout "What do we care for Abroad?" This also 
is vanity and a striving after wind. 

A foolish inconsistency may be "the hobgoblin of 
little minds," as Emerson said. But for a great 
democracy it is something worse than that. It is a 
bar to a sober and settled foreign policy, and a 
disturber of domestic order and progress. It makes 
the pomp of politics ridiculous, and exposes the re- 
public to that kind of laughter among the nations 
which is a warning of trouble. It needs correcting, 
either by our sense of humor, or by our sense of 
honor. 

SCORN OF KNOWLEDGE 

There are other self-destroying propensities in a 
democratic state which we might well consider and 
discuss if there were time. But the camp-fire wanes; 
and before the logs break apart and fall, we must 
give a thought to the most dangerous tendency of 
all, — contempt of learning for its own sake, scorn 
of that elemental knowledge which is the basis of 
character, and frivolous neglect of popular educa- 
tion. 

222 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

But is not America free from that defect? Are 
not Americans the best-educated people in the 
worid ? They are not. And the worst of it is, they 
think they are. 

In the matter of universities and professional 
schools we have done astonishingly well, as Bryce 
remarked, (to our great satisfaction,) in his ex- 
cellent book on The American Commonwealth, Yet 
even in this respect, if we may take the testimony 
of recent home-made and much-praised books on 
American college life, there is much to be desired 
in the way of manners, morals, and mental culture 
among the average frequenters of what we call our 
higher institutions of learning. To speak frankly, 
these pictures do not cheer, though they may in- 
ebriate. 

But when we turn to the broader field and look 
at the general condition and actual results of pop- 
ular education in these States, the view is dismal. 
It would be laughable if it were not appalling. Half 
a dozen small European states, Canada, Australia, 
New Zealand, and Japan are all ahead of America 
in school attendance and literacy. The selective 
draft of 1917 uncovered the ugly fact that about 
twenty-five per cent of the men of America between 
223 



CAMP-FIRES 

eighteen and thirty-five years of age are unable to 
read a newspaper or write a letter. Ten per cent 
cannot write their own names. There are seven 
and a half million people in the United States over 
sixteen years old who can neither read nor write 
English or any other language. 

Negroes, you say, or ignorant foreigners! If 
that were so, would it make the case any better, 
since these are actual or potential voters, our future 
masters? But in fact more than half of these un- 
taught sovereigns of the state are white, and nearly 
one-third of them are white Americans, home-born 
and home-bred. 

What was democracy thinking of when it suffered 
this perilous bulk of ignorance to grow within its 
own body? Are the national institutions in which 
we take such a just and honorable pride safe in the 
hands of men and women whose minds are left in 
darkness and whose moral training is committed 
to chance or charity, while we use their bodies to 
work our farms, dig our ditches, build our railways, 
and run our factories ? 

We are breeding a Helot class of our own flesh 
and blood. We are ignoring the rightful claim of 
every citizen to be prepared for the duties which 
224 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

the state lays upon him. We are debasing the hu- 
man currency of the republic. We are laying un- 
baked bricks in our foundations and building our 
walls with untempered mortar. We are heaping up 
at the doors of our own temple piles of tinder and 
quick-flaming fuel, ready for the torch of the 
anarchist or the insidious slow-match of the cun- 
ning usurper. We are recruiting the sullen armies 
of ignorant unrest; 

For every soul denied the right to grow 
Beneath the flag, will be its secret foe. 

But who denies that right? Democracy denies 
it, by neglect and parsimony, by a careless disre- 
gard of the crying needs of popular education. 

But is not our public-school system open to all? 
It is; but the door is narrow, and few there be that 
find it, — few, I mean, of those who need it most. 
For the children of the rich, the well-to-do, the 
moderately comfortable, the provision of schools 
is ample. It is the children of the poor who suffer 
and go in want. 

In the great city of New York last year one hun- 
dred thousand poor children were deprived of school- 
ing. And why. 5^ Because there were no teachers 
225 



CAMP-FIRES 

to instruct them. And again, why? Because the 
pay offered to teachers was too small to keep them 
alive. 

Democracy gives its carpenters, bricklayers, 
plumbers, and the like, more for their work than it 
gives to those who have the supreme task of en- 
lightening and training its children. Does not this 
look as if it cared more for its houses than for its 
offspring, more for its goods than for its soul? 

In the labor-unions of New York (1919) the aver- 
age yearly wage of skilled workers was $2,496, of 
unskilled workers $1,664. The wage of teachers 
was $1,240. Is not this indisputable evidence that 
scorn of knowledge and silent contempt of educa- 
tion prevail to some extent in America ? 

Is this safe? Is it true economy to indulge the 
proletariat and starve the educariat? (There may 
be no such word, but there is such a thing, the whole 
body of teachers, consecrated to a common task 
and bound together by mutual dependence for the 
success of their work.) Is liberty itself secure in 
a country which boasts of its possession but takes 
no care for its preservation? 

"Freedom, to be desirable," says Stevenson, 
"involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of 
226 



TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 

the free." But these do not spring out of the ground 
by nature. They must be implanted, nurtured, 
developed, and trained. 

Nothing is more difficult to preserve than the 
true love of freedom in a free country. Being 
habituated to it, men cease to consider by what 
sacrifices it was obtained, and by what precautions 
and safeguards it must be defended. 

Liberty itself is the great lesson. And in learning 
it we need teachers, — the wise, the just, the free 
of all ages. Most of all we need the help of religion, 
by which alone the foundations of the state are 
laid in righteousness, and democracy is saved from 
its own suicidal tendencies. 

Come, let us cover the fire, and so to bed, not 
forgetting an honest prayer for the country we love 
best. 



227 



XV 

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 

Many unknown correspondents, from all corners 
of the earth, wrote to the Camp-fire Cogitator while 
some of these papers were coming out in Scribner*s 
Magazine. Almost all of the letters were kind and 
heartening. Many of them were informing, in- 
structive, full of human interest. 

See, here is a little bundle of them, — covered 
with all sorts of postmarks, — messages from strange 
cities and far-off wildernesses and lonely farms and 
ships at sea, — tokens of that hidden friendliness 
which lies all round us in the world. One came 
just the other day, by wireless telegraph, from the 
British Admiral at Bermuda, while I was sailing 
homeward: "May I say. So long?*' 

Many of the letters were answers to a question in 
"Firelight Views," — do you remember? — about the 
lovely old-fashioned rose with the forgotten name. 
Here is a sample of these answers, which comes from 
Elizabethtown in the Adirondacks, and was written 
228 



A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 

by a lady with whom I played when she was a little 
girl, but whom I have not seen for more years than 
it would be polite to number. 

"I believe the rose you refer to in the June 
Scribner^s is the *Gold of Ophir,' — a single, or half- 
double, climbing rose, growing over porches in Cali- 
fornia when I was there twenty-five years ago. It 
had a deep yellow heart, shading into rose colors 
on the edges, and having a curious lavender sheen 
flickering through the yellow and rose, very lovely. 

C. P. H." 

Yes, dear lady, that is the rose, — Gold of Ophir, 
— ^and I*m glad that word about it comes from the 
friendly mountain-land where you live. But my 
own first sight of that softly, purely flaming flower 
was forty-four years ago on a veranda at the "Sand 
Hills," near Augusta, Georgia. The rose queened 
it over all the red and white camellias. 

One of my most prized letters came from an un- 
known Canadian soldier, G. J. S., who is now farm- 
ing in Saskatchewan. A fine little story is quoted 
from it in the chapter on "Christmas Greens." 
He signs himself, "Yours to a camp-fire cinder." 
S29 



CAMP-FIRES 

But once in a while a letter arrives which be- 
longs in a different class. Here is a specimen: 

"San Francisco, Cal. 

Feb. 13, 1921. 
"Henry van Dyke, Esqihre. 

''Dear Sir:— 

"After reading your article in November *Scrib- 
ner's,' (Suicidal Tendencies in Democracy), I am 
impelled to differ with you, and as criticism is not 
always distasteful, here you are. 

"1. About school teachers: — ^In this city they 
have easy hours, paid vacation periods, and then 
in old age a pension. About 75% are Roman 
Catholics who would teach the public schools out 
of existence if they could earn a living at anything 
else. Recently, though, the Americans asserted 
themselves, with the result that, by a narrow ma- 
jority, the Irish crowd were beaten. 

"2. There is too much education to be had free 
of cost. Nearly everybody is educated now, with 
the result that 90% of the graduates sj>end their 
young lives looking around for something easy to 
do. The men who discovered and developed this 
great state were not college graduates or book- 
worms. 

230 



ABUNDLE OF LETTERS 

"3. Democracy — ^The American brand of Democ- 
racy is a farce. Here is an example. By a ma- 
jority of 65000 votes the people of California voted 
*wet.' Immediately thereafter their duly elected 
representatives met and voted 'dry.' This is a 
notorious fact, and yet political orators get up 
and shout about the land of liberty. In a rougher 
age, or in sane Bolshevist community, the afore- 
said legislators would have been hanged or shot. 
American democracy, I repeat, is a farce, and the 
talk of representative government is all 'bunk.' 
Pardon the slang. 

"The only thing to do in this democracy is to 
make as much money as possible and then hide it 
away securely from the small army of tax-eaters 
that fattens itself, a la parasite, in every com- 
munity. 

Yours truly, 

A Western Spectator." 

Now that is an anonymous letter, which is usually 
a thing of shame. But this one is not at all shame- 
ful. It is frank; it is friendly in purpose; it is 
courteous enough; there is no reason at all why 
the author should not have put his name to it. 
231 



CAMP-FIRES 

Yet at the end it seems to me to go a little 
crazy. 

What do you think? Read the last sentence. 
Is not this a graphic illustration of "Suicidal Ten- 
dencies in Democracy"? 



232 



XVI 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 

(WBITTEN IN autumn) 

The time draws near the birth of Christ/* — 

you remember, reader, the rest of those lovely can- 
toes of In Memoriam, where the bells of four vil- 
lages answer each other through the misty night 
while the wreaths of evergreen are woven with 
memories and regrets to deck the church and the 
home in honor of the best of all birthdays. 

Once more the Yuletide is near, — ^near at least 
to the Slave of the Magazine, though by the dull, 
prosaic almanac it is still months away. For me 
it is proximate and pressing. The editor cajoles 
and threatens: the printer waits at extra wages 
for overtime: to-morrow will be Christmas and 
the day after will be New Year; and I must gather 
the figurative greens to-day, or leave our Christmas 
Camp-fire without a token of remembrance or a 
sign of cheer. 

23S 



CAMP-FIRES 

But what a day is this on which I set about my 
pleasant task! Indian summer at its golden best: 
the blue of the sky subdued by a silvery haze to 
the tint of turquoise, faintly luminous: the verdure 
of the woodlands, ripened and dulled a little by the 
August heat, now shot through with the first rich 
threads of autumnal glory: the mountains growing 
higher and more aerial, as they recede in the light 
mist, until they change into bastions of amethyst: 
the deep blue of the open sea ever deepening far 
away, while the white flower of foam above the 
hidden reef expands and closes with every passing 
wave, — a mystic lily on a sleeper's breast. 

From every orchard the smell of ripening apples 
comes out to us, and from the tangled thicket we 
catch the odor of fox-grapes, waiting for the frost 
to sweeten them. Wild asters and goldenrod adorn 
the wayside; gentians bloom in secret places. The 
little birds have assembled their silent companies 
for southward flight. But they are loath to leave 
their summer haunts, and if we go warily through 
the wood, they will flock around us suddenly, flutter- 
ing through the coppice in search of food, flitting 
from branch to branch of the dark firs, lisping, call- 
ing, whispering sotto voce^ no doubt talking over 
^34 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

their plans for the long journey to Central America. 
All round us as we walk through this ephemeral 
beauty, the more enduring growths which are to 
serve for adornment in our homes at the midwinter 
festival are visible and suggestive to the inward 
eye which looks far ahead. Here the yoimg spruces 
and balsam-firs, shapely and symmetrical pyramids 
of absolute green, are standing by thousands in 
the open places, — ^regiments of Christmas-trees! 

Here 

**The groimd-pine trails its pretty wreath 
Running over the club-moss burrs," 

ready to be twined into garlands or long festoons. 
Here the glistening, prickly holly lights its dark 
foliage with red berries; and the ground-hemlock 
hides its delicate coral fruit like drops of translucent 
wax under its spreading branches; and the climb- 
ing bittersweet curls back its orange pods to show 
the scarlet-covered seeds within; and the pale-green 
mistletoe, — not just here perhaps, but a little farther 
south, — ^prepares its pearly berries to sanction kisses 
yet unkissed. 

Nature in her lavish way provides beauty for 
every season: flowers that fade and vanish as the 
summer goes: gold and crimson leaves that fall as 
235 



CAMP-FIRES 

the autumn wanes: and evergreens that will stay 
with us in rich and sober loveliness when 

"Full knee-deep lies the winter snow. 
And the winter winds are wearily sighing." 

All these things are given us to enjoy. They are 
best in the place where nature put them, out-of- 
doors: but a little of each and all we may rightly 
take, if we will, to deck our dwellings, if for no other 
purpose than to be a fragrant reminder that we 
are more akin to nature than to our houses. 

Shall we grieve, then, at the thought that some 
of these pretty, wild, growing things will be cut 
and gathered for Christmas greens? Not I, — if 
the cutting and gathering are wisely done, with 
kindly forethought of the coming generations, so 
that no sort of harmless vine or amiable tree shall 
be exterminated from the earth. 

Let us not spoil our love of nature with a sickly 
affectation. There are enough evergreen things in 
our country to provide a sign of Christmas for every 
house and church in it. To gather them prudently 
is to practise a kind of forestry. After all, one 
can think of no fairer way for a little fir-tree to com- 
plete its life than by becoming for a while the 
236 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

sparkling centre of a circle of human joy, — a Christ- 
mas-tree! If your imagination must endow the 
little fir with feelings, why not give it this fine emo- 
tion of ending in glory ? 

I confess myself out of sympathy with those 
writers who complain that they must write their 
Christmas stories in midsummer and their August 
fiction in midwinter. Incongruous it may seem, 
but such incongruity is of the very warp and woof 
of life. 

Always we are looking backward and forward 
while we live the passing hour. Every true pleasure 
hath in it an extract of the past and a tincture of 
the future. 

I think it was that great artist John La Farge 
who said "all drawing of the things we see is an 
exercise of memory, and the things we have seen 
enter into it." The springs of poetry, Wordsworth 
found, have their origin in "emotion recollected in 
tranquillity." This is true of noble sorrow as of pure 
joy. There is not one little delight that comes to 
us without a flavor of reminder. When we lie on 
a bed of balsam boughs in the forest we dream of a 
Christmas-tree. When we enter the room where 
the gift-laden, candle-lighted tree waits for the 
237 



CAMP-FIRES 

children, the very smell of it carries us away to 
camp in the greenwood. 

You may call this "sentimental," if you will. 
Brother Gradgrind, and scoff at it in your sour, self- 
satisfied way. But it is by this thread that our 
personalities are held together. If you have it not, 
as you boast, that is probably why you are a person 
so little to be envied, a thing of shreds and patches, 
but no man. 

There is no present reality for us humans, with- 
out memory and hope. Lose the first, and you are 
dead; lose the second, and you are buried. But 
in Christmas, as truly as in Easter, if we come to 
it in the spirit, there is a power of resurrection. 

The custom of adorning our houses and places 
of worship at this season with green tokens from 
the winter woods came down to us, no doubt, from 
heathen ancestors who dwelt, as we do, in what 
is ironically called the north temi>erate zone. It 
was partly a tribute to unknown gods, and partly 
an expression of man's wish to make himself com- 
fortable and even merry in the teeth of the rudest 
weather. 

In the tropics, of course, there would be no call 
for this defiance of the frost. And in the southern 
238 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

hemisphere the seasons would be reversed; instead 
of Christmas greens there would be a festival of 
flowers out-of-doors. There must be something 
charming in that; yet those who have tasted the 
ruder and more bracing joys of a northern Christmas 
always hone for them, and cannot be comforted 
with palms and pomegranates. Shakespeare, in 
Low's Labored Lost, makes Biron say, 

"At Christmas I no more desire a rose. 
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows," 

Some hold that the decking of houses with green 
branches in December originated among the Druids, 
and was a pious provision for the poor sylvan spirits, 
— elves and fays and good goblins, — ^who needed a 
shelter from the nipping cold. That may be what 
the Druids told the people; but I think natural 
inclination and a love of beauty had a good deal 
to do with it. 

Religious customs are most easily accepted when 
they fit in with human desires. 

Holly with its bright sheen and vivid color was 
the symbol of mirth and good cheer. Ivy was sacred 
to Bacchus, and hung over the door of wine-shops; 
yet if I mistake not there was also an ancient tradi- 



CAMP-FIRES 

tion that while it invited to drinking it was a talis- 
man against drunkenness, — a most considerate and 
helpful arrangement! Laurel and bay were signs 
of honor and festivity. 

Mistletoe was the most weird and magical of all 
the Christmas greens, feared a little because of its 
association with druidical sacrifices, yet loved a 
good deal for its modern uses. They say that in 
the olden time it was admitted in the Yuletide deco- 
ration of houses, but not of churches. Yet one of 
the antiquarians tells us that in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, in York Cathedral, it was the custom on Christ- 
mas Eve to carry a branch of mistletoe to the high 
altar and "proclaim a pubUc and universal liberty, 
pardon, and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even 
wicked people at the gates of the city toward the 
four quarters of heaven." 

Here we find, perhaps, a hint of that liberty of 
osculation with which the homely plant is now con- 
. nected. And this, again, we may dimly trace back 
to the Scandinavian myth. For the arrow with 
which the rascally Loki tricked the blind Hoder 
into killing Baldur the beautiful, was made of mistle- 
toe. When the fatal shaft was plucked out, the 
mistletoe was given into the keeping of Freya, the 
240 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

love-goddess; and henceforth on every one who 
passes beneath it she bestows a kiss, — a right 
pleasant legend with a happy ending! Yet after 
all, if Freya, — ^well, I will say no more than this, 
if Freya ! 

There is a quaint reference on this point in Haw- 
thorne's "English Note-Books," under date of 
December 26, 1855. He was then American Con- 
sul at Liverpool living in the cosey boarding-house 
of Mrs. Blodgett. "On Christmas Eve and yester- 
day," he says, "there were branches of mistletoe 
hanging in several parts of the house, in the kitchen, 
the entries, the parlor, and the smoking-room, — 
suspended from the gas-fittings. The maids of the 
house did their utmost to entrap the gentlemen 
boarders, old and young, under the privileged places, 
and there to kiss them, after which they were ex- 
pected to pay a shilling. It is very queer, being 
customarily so respectful, that they should assume 
this license now, absolutely trying to pull the gentle- 
men into the kitchen by main force, and kissing 
the harder and more abundantly the more they 
were resisted. A little rosy-cheeked Scotch lass — 
at other times very modest — ^was the most active 
in this business. / doubt whether any gentleman hut 
241 



CAMP-FIRES 

myself escaped. [Italics mine.] I heard old Mr. 

S parleying with the maids last evening and 

pleading his age; but he seems to have met with 
no mercy, for there was a sound of prodigious smack- 
ing immediately afterwards. J was assaulted, 

and fought most vigorously; but was outrageously 
kissed — receiving some scratches, moreover, in the 
conflict. The mistletoe has white wax-looking 
berries, and dull green leaves, with a parasitical 
stem." 

Oh, Mr. Hawthorne ! Was it comedy or tragedy 
that you meant to write ? Would you have us con- 
gratulate, or pity you on your "escape" from the 
rosy-cheeked Scotch lass? Did you lock yourself 
in your room and refuse nourishment for forty- 
eight hours ? At all events you kept your pale Puri- 
tan humor in that gay galley of British fun. 

The old English customs and manners of Yule- 
tide, — the general atmosphere of festive preparation, 
the carolling of the "waits" on Christmas Eve, 
the service in the village church on Christmas Morn, 
the feasting in servants' hall and dining-room, the 
Yule-clog blazing on the broad hearth and the boar's 
head borne in with ceremony, the Wassail-Bowl and 
the Christmas-Pie, the songs and dances and games 
242 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

under the Lord of Misrule, the mummery in fancy 
dress, the ghost-stories by the fireside, the pervasive 
spirit of joviaUty and good comradeship between 
young and old, wise and simple, rich and poor, — 
these Christmas charms are nowhere set forth more 
enchantingly than in The Sketch-Book of Wash- 
ington Irving. No wonder that Sir Walter Scott 
loved the book and the author. Yet even when he 
wrote, the genial Knickerbocker saw these ways 
and manners as antiquities, in a vanishing light; 
and he prefaced his essays with a quotation from 
a still earlier Hue and Cry after Christmas: "But 
is old, old, good old Christmas gone ? Nothing but 
the hair of his good, gray, old head and beard left ? 
Well, I will have that, seeing I cannot have more 
of him." 

That seems to be the proper, regular, inevitable 
attitude to take about Christmas, — a kind of hail- 
and-farewell tone, — as if one would say, "let us 
have one more jolly good time, it may be the last." 
In that fruitful little book Guesses at Truth, written 
in 1827, I find this passage: "It was a practice 
worthy of our ancestors to fill their houses at Christ- 
mas time with their relations and friends; that 
when Nature was frozen and dreary out of doors, 
243 



CAMP-FIRES 

something might be found within doors *to keep 
the pulses of their hearts in proper motion.' The 
custom, however, is only appropriate among people 
who happen to have hearts. It is bad taste to re- 
tain it in these days, when everybody worth hanging 
"*oublie sa Tnere 
Et par hon ton se dif end d'etre pere.^^' 

So runs the song from age to age, — O good old 
times ! O bad present times ! O worse times to 
come! 

I wonder what particular ways and manners of 
our own day the people of the twenty-second cen- 
tury will regard as especially picturesque and ro- 
mantic. 

There is plenty about Christmas in the treasure- 
house of English poetry, from Milton's glorious 
hymn to the lyrics of Eugene Field and Bliss Car- 
man and Lady Lindsay. Richest and most Christ- 
massy are the old ballads and carols and the poems 
by such writers as George Wither and Robert Her- 
rick. But every poet when he comes to this sub- 
ject shows something of his own personal character 
and sentiment, — ^his way of looking at life. Thus 
Stevenson writes a ballad of Christmas at Sea, and 
Kipling of Christmas in India, 
244 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

To some of us there is a peculiar brightness 
and sweetness in the memories associated with the 
homely household rites of putting up the greens 
and dressing the tree. This is done on Christmas 
Eve, after the younger children, or perhaps the 
grandchildren, have hung up their stockings and 
gone to bed. The elder children help. There is a 
joyous bustle and an air of secrecy about the busi- 
ness. If you hear a patter of small feet on the 
stair or see a tousled head peeping through the 
banisters, you must pretend to notice nothing. 

The tall step-ladder must be brought up from 
the cellar, and it is usually very rickety. There are 
wreaths to be hung in windows and festoons to be 
looped over doors. A new way of decorating the 
pillars is much called for, but after many experi- 
ments you always come back to the old way. 
(Reader, I know not what your favorite way may 
be, but I am all for spirals of ground-pine.) Then 
the tree must be set up, on a white cloth, and decked 
with tiny candles, and hung with ornaments, old 
and new. (Don't forget the old ones, or the children 
will miss them.) Then the presents, the simpler 
the better, must be arranged in little piles under 
the tree. 

M5 



CAMP-FIRES 

Last of all, there are certain pictures, — "the old 
familiar faces," gone away, but never nearer than 
to-night — and each one of them must have its wreath 
of green, or perhaps a flower in a little vase before 
it. While you are doing this you have few words, 
but long, long thoughts. 

Now it is midnight, and so to bed, for the chil- 
dren will have emptied their stockings by sunrise, 
and will be down in force to assault the room where 
the tree is locked in. 

This is Christmas at home, — ^the best place. But 
who can tell where the holy day will find him, — 
how far away, how lonely, in what strange and hard 
surroundings ? Shall he then be robbed of its joy ? 
Shall it pass by without a bit of green and a bless- 
ing ? Not if he have the heart to put forth his 
hand and touch the hem of its garment in passing. 

Many a boy, in the years just passed, has had a 
rough Christmas. A letter came to me the other 
day from a young Canadian farmer, a stranger, who 
had been reading these Camp-fire papers, and this 
is what he wrote: 

"The memory comes back embellished by many 
a pleasant and stirring adventure in the Balkans 
246 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

and takes one back to Christmas Day 1916. I was 
one of a British Artillery observation party and 
we were then leading a precarious existence on the 
bald, bare and lofty crown of Hill 380, which over- 
looked Ghergheli, that border town of many vicissi- 
tudes. Our attack, made a few days previously, 
had fizzled into chaos owing to small numbers and 
faulty liaison work with the Zouaves on our left. 
Incidentally our ration supply had failed for about 
five days and a brief, (very brief in fact,) survey 
of our larder found us with a leg of mutton of the 
* white lean' (fat) description and three tins of the 
ubiquitous * bully.' Of tea, sugar, bread or fuel 
there were none, and even if hope springs eternal 
according to Pope, it is apt to run rather in the 
valley of melancholy when a party of nine have to 
spend Christmas day in a poorly constructed shelter, 
and with a few pounds of raw meat as sole suste- 
nance. The hilltop was exposed to machine-gun fire 
and also enfilade artillery strafes, and so movement 
of any kind was somewhat hazardous and even, in 
the circumstances, futile. I had joined the French 
sous-lieutenant in the O. P., and in saddened strains 
we conversed of Noel under more cheerful and homely 
conditions. Towards evening, observation became 
247 



CAMP-FIRES 

diflScult, and so, posting a lookout man in case of 
infantry flares for barrage, we crawled back to our 
inhospitable dugout and exchanged cigarettes with 
a view to await the possible, though highly improb- 
able, arrival of the ration party. From the men*s 
quarters came sounds of a melancholy dirge known 
to the troops as 'Looking for Rum.' A casual glance 
in the direction showed a faint trickle of light, waver- 
ing over the ground. My companion and I crawled 
from our sleeping-bags and crossed to the other dug- 
out. It was a sight of great content to a pair of 
chilly and hungry mortals. In a battered tin helmet 
was a cheery fire, over which one of the telephonists 
fried bully beef in his dixie lid. Further inspection 
showed that the fire came from the outlaw leg of 
mutton ! And so in its greasy and spluttering flame 
we saw, each in his own way, that life after all was 
worth living. We gathered round and sat in the 
warmth, nibbling at fried bully beef and swapping 
yarns, regardless of wars or War Lords. That 
Christmas night was well on its way to relegation 
among the happy and curious incidents of life, when 
a nasty shriek sounded and a dull 'phoof ' of an ex- 
ploding gas shell. We donned our gas helmets and 
in a spirit of braggadocio infused by oiu* fire, allowed 
^48 



CHRISTMAS GREENS 

the mutton to burn on as a further inducement to 
the prowess of the Austrian gunners. Fortune must 
have felt benevolent, because we sat for about three 
quarters of an hour in the glow before it spluttered 
out. And the happy ending came at four in the 
morning with the ration train of mules. 

G. J. S., 
Mankota, Sask., Canada." 

Reader, do you think the war has spoiled Christ- 
mas ? Do you believe the coming revolution, the 
social upheave, the triumph of materialism, the 
anarchy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or 
whatever may be before us, is going to destroy it, 
and leave no room for its return ? I tell you, no ! 

Whatever turnings and overtumings, whatever 
calamity and ruin, are in store for this battered 
old world, you and I will never be poorer than the 
blessed Mary and Joseph when they walked to 
Bethlehem, and that same night 

"The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay, — 
The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay." 

Whatever fantasies of government or no-govern- 
ment the brains of men may devise, the heart of 
249 



CAMP-FIRES 

man will always ask and take a day of rest and peace, 
gladness and good-will to sweeten the long year. 

So let us put up our bits of Christmas green, 
brother, with brave and cheerful hearts: and if 
we want something to strengthen and steady us, 
we will read by our camp-fire this verse of Charles 
Kingsley: 

"O blessed day, which giv'st the eternal lie 
To self, and sense, and all the brute within; 
O come to us amid this war of life; 
To hall and hovel come: to all who toil. 
In senate, shop, or study; and to those 
Who sundered by the wastes of half a world, 
HI- warned and sorely tempted, ever face 
Nature's brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes. 
Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day ! 
Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem, 
And kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine, 
And keep them men indeed, fair Christinas Day.*! 



250 



XVII 

ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

The words consecrated by custom for use at 
meeting and at parting take on a certain formal 
quality by reason of their very sameness and oft 
repetition. For the most part they are but verbal 
gestures of politeness. We exchange them as mere 
tokens or counters of si>eech, without too curiously 
considering the metal whereof they are made, or 
their weight and value in the exact scales of reason. 
On this ground some severe and haughty spirits 
affect to scorn them. Yet, after all, if they serve 
their purpose as signs of courtesy and friendliness 
in the quotidian come-and-go of life, why should 
we ask more of them.^^ The greater, (though not 
the better,) part of our existence is composed of 
things whose general worth doth not depend upon 
their particular importance. They are of that "daily 
bread" which it behooves us to beseech with hu- 
mility and accept with thankfulness. And believe 
me, reader, we digest it better without a careful 
computation of the calories which it contains, or 
^1 



CAMP-FIRES 

a close count of the number of times we munch 
each morsel. 

"Life is real, life is earnest," says the poet; and 
for that very reason, (being put together as we are 
of fatigable flesh and indefatigable spirit, in the 
proportion of a stack of fuel to a spark of flame,) 
our conduct of life should rightly have its large and 
fitting portion of things done easily and lightly, 
by routine, habit, and common consent. 

Is the customary, the conventional, always to 
be despised.'* Shall a man always take the wrong 
side of the road only to prove himself original? 
After all the road hath but two sides, and he that 
taketh ever the wrong one, to show his liberal genius, 
is in the end as conventional a rogue as if he fol- 
lowed the harmless custom of the country. Nothing 
is more monotonous than a habitual irregularity. 

I feel and admit the extraordinary attractions 
of change and novelty. No man can have more joy 
than I in a fresh adventure. Somewhat too much, 
indeed, of the experimental and venturesome there 
hath always been in my temperament, leading me 
often into situations from which it was difficult to 
emerge with credit and skin unbroken. Even now, 
many failures have not cured me of this fault. 
252 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

But familiarity also hath its charm, and I count 
it good that life is impregnated with it. The regular 
ways, the rules of the game, the customs of courtesy, 
and the common phrases of colloquial speech, — 
these are pleasant things in their season, (which is 
daily,) and without them our existence would be 
wayward, rude, exhausting, and far less tolerable 
than it is. 

So with the salutations we exchange as we meet 
and part on the highway or the footpath of life: 
I find that a certain regularity and matter-of-course 
in them is not so much a defect, as a necessity, a 
wise and friendly concession to the limits of our 
inventive power. Meetings and partings are so 
common that their proper ritual must needs be of 
the commonplace. To make it otherwise would 
be to weave the plain family umbreUa of cloth of 
gold. 

What should we do if it were required of us to 
invent a new gesture of greeting every time we 
passed a lady of our acquaintance upon the street? 
Shall not the time-honored lifting of the hat suffice ? 
You may give it a special flourish or grace-note, I 
admit, according to the beauty or dignity of the 
lady, or the degree of warmth in your regard for 
253 



CAMP-FIRES 

her. But these are matters of subtle shading and 
gradation. The gesture remains the same: "Mad- 
am, I take off my hat to you." It is the homage 
of the civilized man to the eternal womanly. 

Granted, then, that our perpetual business of 
coming and going must evolve its formulas of ave 
atque vale, hail and farewell. Granted that we use 
them by convention and habit. Granted that we 
say "How do you do?" without waiting for an 
answer, and "Good day" without looking at the 
sky. What does it matter ? 'Tis not the bare mean- 
ing of the word that counts, but the spirit in which 
it is spoken: good-will at meeting, good wishes at 
parting, — can you ask, or give, more? 

Yet now and then something happens, inward 
or outward, to touch these familiar phrases with a 
finger-ray of light, so that we regard them more 
attentively, and reflect a while upon their origin 
and propriety. Maybe we would fain choose among 
the well-worn stock at our disposal that one greet- 
ing which hath most fitness to the moment and to 
our desire. Maybe we would fain lend to the mere 
syllables of farewell some special tone of kindness, 
comfort, or regret, to make it hnger in the memory 
as a note of music in the air. 
254 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

Three things of this kind have moved me in the 
choice of a theme for this essay. 

It is a word of parting from a year-long occupa- 
tion, and from the friendly readers, near and far, 
who have sat with me in spirit beside these camp- 
fires. 

Moreover, it belongs to the season of the year's 
decline and fall, that last of old December which 
must precede the first of new January; and though 
Charles Lamb calleth New Year's Day every man's 
second birthday, "the nativity of our common 
Adam," I note that his little essay on the subject, 
(true as his writing always is to the depth of human 
nature,) dwelleth more on the losses than on the 
gains of this anniversary. It is epicedial, — more 
of a farewell to the parting than a welcome to the 
coming guest, — ^and so is most poetry, ten times 
valcy to once ave! 

Finally, I find myself now upon that stage of 
life's journey wherein the milestones, as Lowell said, 
seem altered into gravestones, — at least by the 
evening light. Or, if that figure is too sombre for 
you, (and I confess in my own judgment it hath 
too cemeterial a shade for a whole truth,) then let 
me use a simpler metaphor and say: I have come 
255 



CAMP-FIRES 

so far along the way that I have surely more part- 
ings to remember than meetings to expect, on the 
terrestrial road. So, then, it is thrice natural at 
this time that I should write a little essay "on say- 
ing good-bye." 

The word has a beautiful, sacred meaning, which 
is lost to view when we spell it "Good-by." It is 
really a contraction of the phrase God-be-with-ye, 
and is even lovelier than the French "Adieu," — & 
deep, holy word. 

But I have often wondered why we have no part- 
ing phrase in English to express what we so clearly 
hear in other tongues, — ^the lively hope of meeting 
again. The Germans say auf Wiedersehen, — do 
you remember Lowell's lovely lyric with that title ? 
— ^and the ItaHans, a rivederci, and the French, au 
revair. All these are fitting and graceful words; 
they solace the daily separations of life with the 
pleasant promise that we shall see each other again, 
— dr bientoty the French say sometimes, as if to un- 
derline the wish that the next meeting may be 
soon. 

Why should we be forced to use a foreign phrase 
for such a native feeling? Yet what English word 
is there that briefly and precisely utters this senti- 
256 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

ment? The nearest to it is the modern colloquial- 
ism, So long! r i 

This comes, I fancy, from London; it is a bit of 
Cockney dialect. The dictionary of "Passing Eng- 
lish of the Victorian Era," (suspicious title !) says 
that it is a corruption of the Jewish word selah, used 
in the Whitechapel district as a form of good-bye. 
Of this I have my doubts, both whether selah is used 
in that way, and whether it could be twisted into 
"so long." Salacmiy or shalom, the Eastern saluta- 
tion of peace, seems to me a more likely derivation. 

But why go so far afield ? Have not the syllables 
so long in themselves a meaning, or at least a hint 
of meaning, that comes close to what we want? 
So long as we are parted may no harm befall you ! 
Till we meet again, it will seem so long! I profess 
a liking for this child of the street who brings us 
what we need. I would take him in, adopt him, 
make him of the household. Has not his name 
been used already by Walt Whitman as the title 
of a good poem ? 

** While the pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper. So long I 

The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more 
direct, awakening rays about me — So long /'* 
257 



CAMP-FIRES 

The next time I have to bid good-bye to a person 
not too dignified to be loved, — the next time I have 
to leave a scene or an edifice not too grandiose to 
be dear, — the next time, I am going to say, boldly 
and cheerfully, So long I and I care not who hears 
me. 

It is a comfort that so many of our frequent part- 
ings in this sublunary sphere are temporary and 
carry with them the possibility of reunion. You 
shake hands regretfully with a good companion as 
you leave the ship, — ^you going east, he going west, 
— ^yet the world is small and round, — suddenly you 
and he turn a corner in Tokyo or Cairo, and there 
you are, gladly shaking hands again. You finish 
a task this year, and feel half lost as you let it go. 
But next year you shall find yourself busy with 
another task so like the first that you are sure it 
must be a reincarnation. You listen to some favorite 
actor or singer on a "farewell" tour, and sigh that 
you shall hear that voice no more. Yet it falls again 
upon your ear with the old, familiar cadence. I 
will not tell how many years ago I mourned at Mary 
Anderson's good-bye to the stage. But it is less 
than four years since I crept out of hospital in Lon- 
don and saw her again in Pygmalion and Galateay 
258 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

her face and form as lovely, her Hquid voice as 
entrancing as ever. Instead of "farewell" tours, 
let our well-beloved players give us "so long" tours, 
— ^with bright promise of return. 

Of places, too, while we live there is ever this 
hope of another sight. I remember it was in the 
summer of 1888 that my lady Graygown and I bade 
farewell to Norway, not expecting to look upon 
those huge rounded mountains, green vales, and 
flashing waters again. Yet we saw them once more 
in the summer of 1916, — a most unlikely time, — 
the very heart and centre of ,the wild tempest of 
war. But the high hills of Voss gave back no echo 
of the world-tumult, and the swift-flowing Evanger 
had no tinge of crimson in its crystal current. 

Peace rested round our little wooden cottage in 
its old-fashioned garden, on the point between the 
rushing river and the placid lake. Peace lay upon 
the far mountain-ridges, touched here and there 
with gleams of vanishing snow. Peace walked in 
the smooth, sloping meadows where the farmer- 
folk, prolonging pleasant labor late into the luminous 
night, hung the long racks of harvest with honey- 
scented hay. Peace floated in the air over the white 
rapids and translucent green pools of the stream 
259 



CAMP-FIRES 

where I cast the fly, and welcomed me walking home 
at midnight, carrying a brace of silver salmon, 
through the little square where the old villagers sat 
reading their newspapers by the lingering light of 
the northern sky and chatting 

"Of new, unhappy, far-off things 
And battles yesterday.'* 

They gossiped also, I was sure, of homelier sub- 
jects, — 

"Familiar matter of to-day, — 
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain. 
That has been, and may be again ! " 

Were they wrong, those ancient cronies, in tak- 
ing their ease for an hour between ebbing daylight 
and rising dawn? And was I wrong to relish that 
peaceful fortnight of Norway revisited, — that steady- 
ing interval of quiet amid long months of strenuous 
duty on the very edge of war's black and bloody 
gulf? Nay then, if you blame me, reader, I must 
even bear your censure and contempt with the same 
philosophy which hath often helped me through 
life's hard places and bitter seasons. 

Rough is the road, and often dark; frequented 
by outlaws and sturdy beggars; encumbered with 
260 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

wrecks of goodly equipages, and bodies of wounded 
travellers; full of cripples, and weary folk who are 
ready to faint and fall, and overladen beasts and 
men, and little lost children. At every turn we meet 
some disappointment or grief; in the long level 
stretches there is blinding heat and dust; and in 
the steep high places, cold and solitude. It is no 
primrose path, but a way of trial and trouble, — 
yes, at times a very via dolorosa, a way of grief. 

And yet, — truth to tell, — are there not consola- 
tions and encouragements along the way? Rest- 
ing-places like that house in Bethany where the 
Master found repose and love; wide and cheering 
outlooks from the brow of the hill, snug shelters 
in the bosom of the vale, camp-fires beneath the 
trees, wayside springs and fountains flowing among 
the rocks or trickling through the moss ? Here will 
I stop, and stoop, and drink deep refreshment. Share 
with me ! Music and friendship and nature, — sleep 
and dreams and rested waking in the light of morn, 
— to these we say not good-bye, but so long ! They 
will always keep something for us, something to 
come back to; and if we are content with little, 
enough will^be better than a feast. 

Let us be honest with ourselves, and own that 
261 



CAMP-FIRES 

the return is never quite the same as the first ex- 
perience. It may be more, it may be less, but it 
always has a shade of difference. One thing is 
surely lost, the touch of surprise, — 

**The first fine careless rapture." 

But by way of recompense there may come a 
deeper understanding, a more penetrating sym- 
pathy. It is so, I think, with great music. The 
third or fourth hearing of a noble symphony is per- 
haps the best. After that our delight varies, rising 
or falling with our mood, or with the outward cir- 
cumstances. It is so with our best-beloved books, 
— companionable books, — ^books made for many 
readings. Their inward charm outwears their bind- 
ing. As often as we revisit them after a brief sepa- 
ration they tell us something new, or something 
old with a new meaning. Yet one thing they offer 
us but once, — ^that which Keats describes in his 
sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,'* 
— ^the joy of discovery. I confess that I would give 
a thousand dollars if I had never read Henry Esmond 
or Loma Doone, — ^so that I might have the delight 
of reading them for the first time. But to make 
it quite complete perhaps I should need also to give 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

an extra tip to the old Timekeeper and persuade 
him to set my clock back fifty years. 

Many of our farewells are unconscious. You 
lend a book, and it is never brought back. You 
leave a place, and find no opportunity or pathway 
of return. You part from a friend, in anger or in 
sorrow, or it may be simply in the casual way with 
no special feeling, — and lo, the impenetrable cur- 
tain falls and the familiar face is hidden forever. 

So much are we at the mercy of the unknown in 
this regard, that if we thought of it too closely and 
constantly it would unhinge reason and darken 
life with an intolerable gloom. Every departing 
carriage would bear black plumes, and on every 
ship that sailed away from us we should see a ghostly 
Charon on the bridge. We should be trying always 
to speak memorable "last words," instead of the 
cheerful, heartening so long which befits our ordi- 
nary occasions. 

Here memory helps us to be sane, if we trust her. 
For we know that whatever hath entered deeply 
into our being is never altogether rapt away. The 
scene that we have loved, 

"This town's fair face, yonder river's line. 
The mountain round it and the sky above," 



CAMP-FIRES 

cannot be blotted from the inward vision. Nor 
can the soul that hath companioned ours through 
days and nights of bright and dark, turn a corner 
into obHvion. Though much is taken, more remains, 
— the very cadence of the voice, the clasp of the 
hand, the light in the eyes, "the sweet assurance 
of a look," — ^these are treasures laid up in the heaven 
of remembrance where thieves do not break through 
nor steal. 

Strange, how the last sight or the last word cA a 
friend is not always the one that we recall most 
vividly. It is often some chance phrase, some un- 
meditated look or gesture. As if nature would say 
to us, (even as the Master said,) "Take no thought, 
be not anxious, for the morrow: be yourself to-day: 
so you will be remembered.'* 

It hath been my lot, (having lived too long,) to 
conduct the funeral, or pronounce a memorial ad- 
dress, for many friends more renowned than I shall 
ever be, — Governor E. D. Morgan, ex-President 
Cleveland, Mark Twain, Clarence King, Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, John Bigelow, Hamilton Mabie, 
Sir William Osier, William Dean Howells, — ^and 
each of these lives in my memory by something 
very simple and not at all famous : a little name- 
264 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

less act of every-day kindness or courage, a self- 
revealing look of wonder or joy or regret, a good 
word let fall by hazard at the crossroads, — in brief 
a natural, unintended, real good-bye. 

No doubt the world grows poorer by the loss of 
such friends, — ^yes, and of others most dear to my 
heart: the father whose firm loving hand set my 
fingers on hfe's bow and taught me to draw the 
arrow to the head; the bright-faced, daring lad 
on whom the half of my hope was staked; the girl 
with golden hair and warm brown eyes who was to 
me "a song in the house of my pilgrimage," Poorer, 
— ay de mi! What honest man dare deny that the 
parting from such comrades leaves life poorer ? But 
against all inconsolable grievers and complainers, 
(and most of all against my own rebel thoughts,) 
I maintain and will ever maintain that life is also 
richer, immeasurably richer than it would be if 
these treasures had not been loaned to us for a while. 

"Death," said Stevenson, "outdoes all other 
accidents because it is the last of them." There 
is something taken for granted in that word "acci- 
dent" which I would not altogether admit. But 
when our grim and genial essayist goes on to speak 
of the slight influence which the prosi>ect of death 
^65 



CAMP-FIRES 

and its certain uncertainty exercise upon our daily 
conduct, and of the folly of allowing it to play the 
master in our thought and drive us like slaves to 
a hundred trembling compliances and evasions, I 
follow him fully and find him right. 

A friend once begged Woodrow Wilson not to 
risk his life by marching in a long procession through 
an excited city, — "the country cannot afford to 
lose its President." Like a flash came his answer, 
"The country cannot afford to have a coward for 
President." 

It is a strange fact, and worth noting, that those 
who have most to do with death, — like doctors and 
nurses and ministers, — are not much perturbed by 
it. They are of the same mind as Cato, in Cicero's 
dialogue On Old Age: "satisfy the call of duty and 
disregard death." 

There is a curious illustration of this written by 
Procopius and cited by Anatole Le Braz in his won- 
derful book La LSgende de la Mori, Here it is: • 

"At the beginning of the sixth century after 
Christ, the island of Britain was populariy believed 
to be the country of the dead. On the opposite 
coast of Brittany, says Procopius, there are scat- 
tered many villages whose peoples follow fishing 



ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 

and farming for their living. Subjects of the Franks 
in all other respects, they are excused from paying 
tribute, because of a certain service ('tis their word,) 
which they say has been laid upon them since a 
remote epoch: they claim to be under vows as *the 
ferrymen of souls.' At night they are suddenly 
roused from sleep by a loud knocking at the door: 
a voice outside calls them to their task. They rise 
in haste; it would be vain to refuse obedience; a 
mysterious force drags them from their home to 
the beach. There they find boats, not their own, 
but stranger-boats. They look empty, but in reality 
they are full of people, loaded down almost to the 
sinking-point, — the water laps along the gunwale. 
The ferrymen embark and take the oars. An hour 
afterward, despite the heavy load of invisible pas- 
sengers, they reach the island, — a voyage which 
ordinarily requires not less than a day and a night. 
Hardly have the boats touched shore when they are 
quickly lightened, though the rowers cannot see 
any of their fellow-travellers debark. A voice is 
heard on the land, — the same which waked the 
rowers in their beds. It is the Conductor of Souls 
presenting the dead whom he brings, one by one, 
to those appointed to receive them. The men he 
267 



CAMP-FIRES 

calls by their fathers' names; the women, if there 
are any, by the names of their husbands; and of 
each shade he tells what work it did while living." 

There the legend breaks off. But what becomes 
of the boats? And what of the ferrymen of souls, 
with their oars dripping, and their tanned faces 
gleaming in the misty starlight ? Undoubtedly they 
row home to their Breton coast, and go to bed and 
sleep late, and rise again to their fishing and their 
farming, and day after day are busy and lazy and 
quarrelsome and tranquil and merry and unsatis- 
fied, (even as you and I,) until the next knocking 
at the door by night, and the next call from the 
dark, and the time, at last, when their own names 
will be on the list of passengers. 

For what port.^ Methinks I know; for One who 
is worthy of all trust, my Pilot, hath spoken a 
name to me and told me not to be afraid. But where 
it lies, that haven of salvaged ships and of forgiven 
failures, and when or on what course it will be ap- 
proached, I know not, friend, any more than you. 

The guide-posts of the sea are the stars. And 
all its mighty waters lie in the hollow of an almighty 
hand. 

So good-bye, reader, — a good voyage, — so long ! 



FELLOW TRAVELLERS 

MEMORIX POSITA 



XVIII 

AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN* 

The long, useful, honorable career of John Bige- 
low was marked from beginning to end by a joyful 
attention to human duties. He was a human foun- 
tain of sanely directed energy. He loved to be in 
the thick of things. He was never wiUing to retire, 
like Shelley's imaginary reformers, into a cave. 
He steadfastly pursued the active life. 

But, at the same time, he was a follower of the 
contemplative life. He loved truth, and sought for 
the Heavenly Wisdom more than for hid treasure. 
Finding her, his heart was glad, and he took counsel 
with her in the night season. Life was intensely 
real to him, and intensely interesting, because it 
meant more than the eye can see or the ear can 
hear. Guided by the Bible, and by Swedenborg, 
and by such poets as Milton and Wordsworth and 
Bryant, he learned to read the inward heart of things 
beneath their outward form. But the more his 

*Read before the Century Club» New York, March 9, 1912. 
271 



CAMP-FIRES 

meditation deepened, the more his action was in- 
vigorated and directed to useful ends. 

He was in fact a common-sense mystic, refusing 
to let life be divided, or to content himself with 
either half. He belonged to the double tribe of 
Joseph, both dreamers and doers, men of the type of 
Milton and Lincoln and Pasteur, who are better 
citizens on earth because they hold fast to their 
citizenship in Heaven. 

John Bigelow was born in 1817, at the village 
which is now called Maiden, on the shores of the 
Hudson River, between Kingston and Catskill. 
The love of that noble stream ran through his life; 
beside it he built his country residence, "The Squir- 
rels"; and one of his latest public utterances was 
a fervid, almost fiery, letter to the people, in con- 
nection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 
1909, urging that the only fitting way to honor the 
memory of those men would be to protect the waters 
of their river from pollution and its banks from 
desecration, that it might flow brightly and bravely 
to the sea, "ready to appease the hunger and thirst 
of millions." There was always something con- 
crete and practical in the idealism of John Bige- 
low. 

272 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

The same homely, concrete quality marks the 
boyhood chapter in his "Retrospections of an Ac- 
tive Life." He makes you see his birthplace, the 
old farmhouse, lighted by tallow dips, warmed by 
huge wood-fires, with its big kitchen, its spinning- 
wheels and tubs of goldenrod dye, its cask of soft 
soap in the woodshed, and its cellar cranmied with 
all sorts of provisions, "the very stomach of the 
house." He takes you with him driving the cows 
to pasture, and into the snake-haunted Eden of a 
certain strawberry-meadow (where he was duly 
punished for picking fruit on Sunday) and over 
the river to a dull school at Sharon, and back again 
to his native district school, which he says was "the 
only school in which I was conscious of having re- 
ceived any thorough or conscientious instruction 
from my teachers." He gives you a glimpse of a 
spelling-bee, a country circus, the disastrous conse- 
quences of his first cigar, his first attempt to com- 
mend himself to a little girl by wearing his Sunday 
clothes on a week-day. He shows you his father's 
big country store by the river, and the sloops that 
carried its multifarious trade, and the father him- 
self, six feet four of rugged manhood, a Bible Chris- 
tian and a convinced Presbyterian, but withal a 
273 



C A M P -:F I R E S 

good provider, a careful farmer and shrewd trader, 
"not ascetical, but always cheerful and sensible," 
a very human sort of Puritan and good to live with. 

Such homes as this were favorable starting-places 
for young Americans. They had enough rough- 
ness to be bracing, enough restraint to be sobering, 
enough elevation of thought and talk to be enno- 
bling, and enough liberty to quicken the heart with 
the joy of living. 

Young Bigelow spent three years at a college in 
Hartford without getting much good, and finished 
his course at Union College without getting any 
harm. In his eighteenth year, he left home to study 
law; starting with a firm at Hudson, where he used 
to sweep out the office before breakfast; and then 
going to New York, where he began making those 
friendships of the royal kind which are only pos- 
sible to one who has himself a royal spirit, — among 
which the first place must be given to his intimacies 
with William CuUen Bryant, Charles O'Conor, and 
Samuel J. Tilden. After that, comes the long list 
of men who were brought into relation with him 
by a common interest in public affairs, — Sumner, 
Preston King, Seward, E. D. Morgan, Cobden, 
John Bright, William Hargreaves, Laboulaye, Mon- 
274 



AN OLD-^STYLE AMERICAN 

talembert, — it would be impossible to name them 
all. No man was ever richer in the fruits of human 
intercourse than John Bigelow, for in this kind he 
was both a generous giver and a grateful receiver. 

Plutarch tells us that Plato, at the close of his 
life, found cause for thankfulness in three things: 
that he was bom a man, not a beast; that he was 
born a Greek, not a barbarian; and that he was 
born a contemporary of Sophocles. John Bigelow 
was one of Plutarch's men, and I think he would 
have put his reasons for thanksgiving thus: "that 
I was born a man; that I was born an American; 
that I was bom a contemporary of Bryant." For 
the character and genius of this illustrious friend 
he cherished the most sincere reverence. He tells 
us that, long after their daily intercourse was 
terminated, it was his custom to test what he had 
done, or proposed to do, by asking himself: "How 
would Mr. Bryant act under similar circum- 
stances?" "I rarely applied this test," he adds, 
"without receiving a clear and satisfactory an- 
swer." 

Such a talent for friendship as this is one of the 
marks of excellence, not of the Napoleonic type, 
but of the human, companionable, serviceable kind. 
275 



CAMP-FIRES 

Admitted to the bar in 1838, he made respectable, 
but not rapid, progress in his profession, helping 
to make both ends meet by teaching and by writing 
literary articles for the reviews and political articles 
for the newspapers. His first public appointment 
was as an inspector of the State Prison at Sing Sing, 
in which position he did good work for reform. 

In 1846 the alleged war with Mexico inaugurated 
the real conflict between Slavery and Freedom. 
Mr. Bigelow took his part with that section of the 
Democracy known as the Free-Soil Party, of which 
Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, and Samuel J. 
Tilden were leaders. Mr. Bigelow's force as a writer 
increased as his interest in national affairs grew 
more intense. In 1848 he was invited to join Mr. 
Bryant in the ownership and editing of the Eve- 
ning Post, the ablest organ of the Free-Soil Democ- 
racy. Charles 0*Conor, although belonging to the 
other wing of the party, generously indorsed the 
notes which were necessary to finance the arrange- 
ment. Thus Mr. Bigelow entered upon the most 
active and strenuous period of his labors, and worked 
as a fighting editor from 1848 till 1861, when he 
sold his interest in the paper and resigned his chair 
to his friend Mr. Parke Godwin. 
276 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

Of the policy of the Post during those years we 
have his own description. "The questions we had 
to discuss, happily for me, were mainly moral ques- 
tions. We were for freedom against slavery, which 
was the piece de resistance from year in to year out. 
We were the leading, if not the only, champion of 
a revenue tariff as against a protective tariff, in all 
the Northern States. We hunted with almost reck- 
less audacity every base or selfish influence that 
was brought to bear either upon legislation or ad- 
ministration. Hence, although we always professed 
to be Democrats and to preach what we regarded 
as the genuine principles of popular sovereignty, 
we were never regarded as part of the machine, 
and rarely were even as tolerant of it as perhaps at 
times we might well have been." 

Precisely so. Not only toward "the machine" 
but toward other objects and adversaries, Mr. Bige- 
low's early and middle manner sometimes betrayed 
a lack of tolerance that bordered on acerbity. He 
was not an easy-going man, nor by nature soft- 
spoken. His disposition was sanguine; his temper 
a distinct conductor of ardent heat; his will strong 
tjo the point of obstinacy. Doubtless the tempta- 
tions of an editor's irresponsible power, of which 
277 



CAMP-FIRES 

he wrote so feelingly in his "Life of Bryant,'* may 
have led him into some of those errata that he de- 
plored as inseparable from the conduct of frail and 
ignorant humanity. But all this only makes it the 
more remarkable and praiseworthy that his later 
manner should be so marked by consideration and 
urbanity, that he became to us in the Century Club 
the very type and model of the high courtesy which 
(by way of sad confession) we call "old-fashio*ed." 

A gentleman, I take it, is one who is not incapable 
of anger, but capable of learning to control it, and 
who, for reasons of good-will, sets his intelligence 
to avoid equally the giving and the taking of offense. 

But the years preceding the Civil War were hot 
times, in which offense abounded. Through all that 
heat and turbulence and confusion, the Evening 
Post held steadily, if not always serenely, to its 
moral principles, and rendered great service in in- 
spiring and guiding the independent Democrats, 
whose courage and self-sacrificing loyalty made 
possible the foundation of the Republican party, 
the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the preserva- 
tion of the Union. 

Before leaving this part of my subject, I must 
say a word as to the kind of Democracy in which 
278 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

Mr. Bigelow believed, and to which he remained 
faithful throughout his life. He was no friend to 
absolutism in popular sovereignty any more than 
in monarchy or empire. He held that the rule of 
the people should be self-limited and self-directed 
by constitutional restraint; that the use of the 
suffrage should be for the choice of representative 
and executive officers, and for such amendment of 
the Constitution as becomes necessary from time 
to time; that the object of the Republic is to safe- 
guard the development of the native energies of its 
citizens unfettered by superfluous legislation; and 
above all that a democracy, while it may defend 
itself by arms, can only propagate its ideas by ex- 
ample. He was in fact a collective individualist. 

He thought, not that the Old is better than the 
New, but that the Old is necessary to the New, its 
root and spring. Progressivism he disUked for its 
reactionary tendencies. He expected no more from 
pK)litical organizations and combinations than was 
in them, knowing that "governments like clocks 
would run down as they were wound up." He was 
of the school of Solon, who tried "so to frame his 
laws as to make it evident to the Athenians that 
it would be more for their interest to observe them 
^79 



CAMP-FIRES 

than to transgress them." He belonged to the 
party of the wise men in all the ages, — the party 
that knows the only sure way to better the social 
fabric is to improve the moral fibre out of which 
it must be woven. 

It was during his journalistic period that three 
great good fortunes came to Mr. Bigelow; first, 
the beginning of his happy domestic life, by his 
marriage with Miss Jane Poultney in 1850; second, 
the commencement of his life as an author in 1852, 
with a volume called "Jamaica in 1850; or the 
Effect of Fifty Years of Freedom on a Slave 
Colony"; third, the recovery of his faith in the 
Bible, through an acquaintance in 1853 with the 
works of Emanuel Swedenborg. So, close together, 
he found the three immediate jewels of the soul: 
companionship, vocation, illumination. 

In August, 1861, President Lincoln appointed 
him to the American Consulship in Paris, with the 
idea that he should give special attention to the 
Press in France, and to the formation of public 
opinion favorable to the United States. A man 
better qualified by nature and training for such a 
task could not have been discovered. 

Mr. Bigelow was a representative of the Spirit 
280 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

of America in the sense that he gave a personal 
impression of the qualities that created the Revo- 
lution and the Republic: self-reliance, fair play, 
energy, love of the common order, and desire of 
individual development. These he embodied with 
a singular charm of simplicity and dignity in France 
during our Civil War, even as Benjamin Franklin 
had embodied them with a like charm during our 
Revolution. 

The services of these two persons of native dis- 
tinction and shrewdness, — the one in winning the 
alliance of France in our struggle for liberty; the 
other in preventing the hostility and interference 
of France in our struggle for Union, — ^were of a 
value so inestimable that it is difficult to measure 
between them. If Bigelow's task was easier than 
Franklin's by reason of the greater national re- 
sources and powers which supported it, at the same 
time it was more difficult by just so much as the 
character of Louis XVI was more sincere, generous, 
and noble than the character of Napoleon III. It 
was a fascinating turn of fortune that Bigelow was 
able, at the close of his French residence, to recover 
for his country the manuscript of Franklin's Auto- 
biography, and to publish the editio princeps of the 
281 



CAMP-FIRES 

Correct text of that extraordinary Kttle book, the 
first American classic. 

In 1865 he was appointed by Lincoln to succeed 
the late W. L. Dayton as Envoy Extraordinary 
and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
France, in which oflfice President Johnson continued 
him until Bigelow's resignation in 1866. His work 
in connection with the French occupation of Mexico 
and the preposterous but none the less dangerous 
schemes involved in what he called "The Chromo 
Empire " of Maximilian, was done with a firm, deU- 
cate, and masterly hand. 

He conveyed warnings to Napoleon and his 
rather sky-rockety ministers without making 
threats. He encouraged the government at Wash- 
ington to wait with dignity for the inevitable debacle 
of the Franco-Austrian house-of-cards, rather than 
to plunge rashly into a superfluous war in Mexico. 

His letters and sayings of this period are full of 
pithy eloquence and homespun wit. For instance, 
he says to Napoleon's Foreign Minister, "It is as 
idle to suppose that you can disregard a great na- 
tional feeling as that you can annihilate a particle 
@f matter." To R. H. Dana he writes, "I hope 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

you will do what you can to prevent the country 
getting into a false position about Mexico and con- 
verting a sentiment into a policy." To Seward: 
"There is a way of saying that you won't be bul- 
lied that amounts to bullying." Of a certain 
bishop: "He is one of those who are for all the 
freedoms when they serve the Church and against 
them when they don't." Of President Johnson 
beginning his conflict with Congress: "I wish he 
had found means to plough around this stump in- 
stead of running smack into it." Of the approach 
of the Austro-Prussian War: "Europe is going to 
war as people sometimes go to the brandy-bottle 
to get rid of their own domestic troubles, and with 
a prospect of the same success." 

Still more clearly do Mr. Bigelow's natural 
sagacity and power of just estimation come out 
in his appreciation of President Lincoln. "The 
greatness of Lincoln must be sought for in the con- 
stituents of his moral nature. I do not know that 
history has made a record of the attainment of any 
corresponding eminence by any other man who so 
habitually, so constitutionally, did to others as he 
would have them do to him. He was not a learned 
283 



CAMP-FIRES 

man. But the spiritual side of his nature was so 
highly organized that it rendered superfluous much 
of the experience which to most men is indispensa- 
ble, — the choicest prerogative of genius. In the 
ordinary sense of the word, Lincoln was not a 
statesman. The issues presented to the people 
at the Presidential election of 1860 were, to a larger 
extent, moral questions, humanly speaking, than 
were those presented at any other Presidential elec- 
tion. . . . Looking back upon the Administration, 
and upon all the blunders which from a worldly 
point of view, Lincoln and his advisers seemed to 
have made, and then pausing to consider the re- 
sults of that Administration, ... we realize that 
we had what above all things we most needed, a 
President who walked by faith and not by sight; 
who did not rely upon his own compass, but fol- 
lowed a cloud by day and a fire by night, which 
he had learned to trust implicitly." 

After Mr. Bigelow's return to America, he was 
appointed by his friend Governor Tilden, in 1875, 
as a member of the Commission which broke up 
the dishonest Canal Ring of New York. In the same 
year he was elected Secretary of State. With these 
284 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
two exceptions, his life from 1867 to 1911 was with- 
drawn from political oflSce and devoted to public 
service. 

Mature at sixty, mellow at seventy, vigorous at 
eighty, venerable at ninety, he followed and finished 
his chosen course of usefulness, with eye undinmaed, 
joy unabated, and courage undismayed. 

To those of us who knew and loved him in his 
later years, he seemed a living link between the 
present and the past. But his power to join old 
times with ours lay not only in his longevity, but 
also in his vitality. His interest in the present days 
was no less than in the days that are gone. He 
joyfully admitted that many changes in the world 
had been for the better. 

He was not one of those old men who think to 
show their greatness by making others feel small, 
their venerableness by making others feel juvenile. 
Retired from business and politics, he did not live 
in retirement and idleness, but in the open, will- 
ingly assuming such labors, burdens, and studies 
as he conceived would enable him to employ his 
undiminished strength gratis for the benefit of his 
country and his city. 

285 



CAMP-FIRES 

Remembering this beautiful and fruitful period 
of John Bigelow's autumn, we think not so much 
of the length of his life as of its nobility, and recall 
for him the words of that fine inscription in the 
Latin Chapel of Christ Church, Oxford: 

"iVoTi enim quae longaeva est senectus 
honorata est, neque numero annorum mul- 
torum ; sed prudentia hominibus est canitiesy 
el vita immaculata est senilis aetas.*' 

His literary works were considerable, both in 
number and importance; and in all of them that 
I have read, the substance and the style are marked 
and distinguished by the personality of the author. 
This is one of the indispensable qualities of Litera- 
ture, which calls no children legitimate who do not 
resemble their father. 

Chief among his books, I would name his Life 
of Samuel J. Tilden; his admirable monograph 
on William Cvllen Bryant, whom he always re- 
garded as "America's greatest poet"; his pro- 
foundly interesting and spiritually suggestive 
volume on The Mystery of Sleep; and finally 
his three rich tomes of Retrospections of an Active 
lAfCy — a title which he emphasized with some 
286 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

particularity, and rightly, for it defined his pur- 
pose and revealed his character. 

There was always something definite and decided 
about John Bigelow. He knew what he thought, 
and said it. His courtesy was not of the nature 
of compromise, but of the respect due to others 
and to himself. In his opinions, his theories of life, 
even his personal tastes, he was clear and positive. 
His preferences for the teachings of Swedenborg, 
for the practice of homeopathy, for the doctrine 
of free trade, and for temperance, fresh air, and 
cheerfulness as the elements of a sound hygiene, 
were subject to polite discussion but not liable to 
change. I imagine that nothing short of an amend- 
ment to the Constitution would have induced him 
to give up his horses for an automobile. 

It is pleasant and profitable to bring to mind his 
rugged face, his lofty figure, his simple-stately ways 
as he moved among us, bearing the burden of his 
ninety years with a certain half-humorous, half- 
pathetic, whdly virile grace. Recall his presence 
as he presided in the Century library, cheerfully 
upholding the tradition of the fellowship from 
which all of his contemporaries and most of his 
earlier friends had vanished. Recollect him as he 
287 



CAMP-FIRES 

appeared fifteen months ago, at the meeting of 
the American Academy in the New Theatre, to 
read his audaciously delightful paper on "A Break- 
fast with Alexander Dumas," or six months later 
when he spoke at the opening of the Public 
Library. Or best of all, remember him as he used 
to receive his friends last fall, in his sunny book- 
room at 21 Gramercy Park, sitting in his high- 
backed chair, reading, dreaming, or working, sur- 
rounded by the loving care of children and grand- 
children. 

Always where he could put his hand upon them, 
a copy of the Bible and a volume of Swedenborg 
lay beside him. Always he was ready to talk with 
unfailing interest and vividness of old times or new 
times, of the progress of the city, of the union of 
the churches on the basis of their main and real 
beliefs, of the improvement of the world, or of the 
mysteries of Heaven. 

Thus he waited, not idly but busily, not fear- 
fully but bravely, "in the confidence of a certain 
faith, in the comfort of a reasonable, religious and 
holy hope," for the coming of the great change, 
the great liberation, the great promotion from 
an active life to a redeemed immortality of ser- 



AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 

vice. So John Bigelow passed away on December 
19, 1911: 

"His twelve long sunny hours 
Bright to the edge of darkness: then the calm 
Hex)ose of twilight and a crown of stars !" 



XIX 

INTERPRETER'S HOUSE* 

A TRIBUTE to the memory of Hamilton Wright 
Mabie must be full of deep and warm affection if 
it would express in any measure the thoughts and 
feelings of the many who knew him pyersonally in 
the crowded pilgrimage of American life. 

He was a man with a genius for friendship. 
R^Hgious by nature and holding to Christian faith 
and ideals with unalterable conviction, he had a 
simple, beautiful, reasonable quality of manhood 
which kept him from ever becoming a bigot, a 
fanatic, or a sentimentalist. He understood hu- 
man nature, with all its faults and twists, and he 
loved it notwithstanding all. Steering his own 
course with a steady hand, he wished not to judge 
or dominate other men, but only to help them to 
see the star by which he steered and to make its 
light more useful to them for guidance. Those 
who came to him for counsel got it clean and 

*Read before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
April 10, 1919. 

290 



INTERPRETER'S HOUSE 

straight, often with that touch of humor which 
was the salt of his discourse. Those who dishked 
and scorned him as an "old fogy," and pursued 
him with a strange malice of petty mockery, found 
him silent, tolerant, content to go forward with 
his own work, and ready to help them if they got 
into trouble. He was the most open-minded and 
kind-hearted of men. To his acquaintances and his 
thousands of auditors on his lecture tours, he was a 
voice of tranquil wisdom, genial wit, and serene 
inspiration. To his intimates he was an incompar- 
able comrade. 

I came to know him well only after he had passed 
middle Hfe. But I felt sure that the spirit which 
was in him then, had animated him from the be- 
ginning, and I know that it continued to illuminate 
him to the end. Mabie was not a man to falter or 
recant. He advanced. He fulfilled the aim of 
Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior," who 

"when brought 
Among the tasks of real life hath wrought 
Upon the task that pleased his childish thought." 

He was born at Cold Spring, New York, in 1846, 
and graduated from Williams College in 1867, and 
291 



CAMP-FIRES 

from the Columbia College Law School in 1869. 
But the practice of law as a profession did not at- 
tract or suit him. In 1879 he became an editorial 
writer for The Christian Unioriy a religious period- 
ical of broadening scope and influence, which de- 
veloped under the leadership of Lyman Abbott 
and Hamilton Mabie and an able staff into the 
liberal, national, Christian weekly well named The 
Outlook, 

Mabie's work on this paper was constant, de- 
voted, happy, and full of quiet stimulus to clearer 
thinking and better living. Most of his articles, 
which must have numbered thousands during his 
service of thirty-seven years, were unsigned. But 
they bore the image and superscription of his fine 
intelligence, broad sympathies, and high standards 
both in literature and in life. They were not ser- 
mons. They were plain words of wisdom uttered 
in season. They were sometimes pungent, — ^for he 
had a vivid sense of righteousness, — ^but they were 
never malicious or strident. They were the coun- 
sels of a well-wisher. He hated evil, but when he 
struck at it he desired to help those whom it had 
deluded and enslaved. For the most part he wrote 
from the positive rather than from the negative 



INTERPRETER'S HOUSE 

side, preferring the praise of right to the condem- 
nation of wrong. Something in his character per- 
meated his style. A certain mipretending reason- 
ableness, a tranquil assurance of the ultimate vic- 
tory of light over darkness, an understanding sense 
of the perplexities and shadows which overcast our 
mortal Kfe, gave to the words which he wrote from 
week to week a power of penetration and per- 
suasion. They entered myriads of homes and 
hearts for good. In this service to modern life 
through the editorial pages of The Outlook he con- 
tinued gladly and faithfully until he died, on New 
Year's Eve, 1916. 

During this long period of professional labor as 
a writer for the press, he developed a national in- 
fluence perhaps even wider as a public lecturer and 
an author. 

No man in America was more welcome to an in- 
telligent audience, for a lyceum lecture or a com^ 
mencement address, than Hamilton Mabie. Here 
his personal qualities had full play, even more than 
in his writing. His radiant nature, his keen sense 
of humor, his ready and attractive manner of 
speech, his sympathy with all sorts and conditions 
of men and women, gave him quick and easy ac- 
293 



CAMP-FIRES 

cess to his listeners. He reached them because he 
took the trouble to open the doors. 

The material of his lectures, as in the case of 
Emerson, was that which he afterward used in his 
books. But when he was speaking it was put in a 
different form, — ^more free, more colloquial, adapted 
to the occasion. Why should a speaker regard his 
auditors as cast-iron receptacles for a dose of doc- 
trine? Mabie never did that. But he always had 
something to say that was serious, well-considered, 
worth thinking about. That was the reason why 
thoughtful people liked to hear him. He was a 
popular lecturer in the best sense of the phrase. 

The demands upon his time and strength in this 
field were incessant. In addition he met the con- 
stant appeal of humane and hopeful causes looking 
to the betterment of social life,^ — ^like the Kinder- 
garten Society of which he was for many years the 
president. To these calls he was always ready to 
respond. It was his self-forgetfulness in such work 
that exhausted his strength and brought on his 
final illness. He was a soldier on the firing-line of 
human progress. In that cause he was glad to give 
his life. 

His books have deserved and had a wide reading. 
294 



INTERPRETER'S HOUSE 

They show the clear carefulness of this thinking, 
the depth of his love for nature and human nature* 
his skill as a writer of translucent English. 

Nothing could be better for the purpose for which 
they were intended than the volumes in which he 
rendered, for the boys and girls of to-day, the great 
stories and legends of the past, — Norse Stories 
from the Eddas, Myths Every Child Should Know, 
Heroes Every Child Should Know, and so on. 

But much more significant and original is the 
series of books in which he made his contribution 
to the art of essay-writing, — My Study Fire, Under 
the Trees and Elsewhere, Short Studies in Literature, 
These are rich in the fruits of observation in the 
home, the library, the great out-of-doors, — 

"The harvest of a quiet eye 
That broods and sleeps on his own heart." 

These volumes were followed by others in which 
he expressed his deepening thoughts on the unity 
and the beauty of life in brief essays on Nature 
and Culture, Books and Culture, Work and Culture, 
The Life of the Spirit, and The Great Word, — ^by 
which he means Love, not blind and selfish, but 
open-eyed, intelligent, generous. A fine ideal 
295 



CAMP-FIRES 

guides the course of all these essays, — ^an ideal 
of the co-operation of nature and books and work 
in the unfolding of personality. Culture, in that 
sense, vras Mabie's conception of the best reward 
that life has to give. Kvltur, in the German sense, 
machine-made and iron-bound, he despised and 
hated. For this and other reasons he was ardent 
for the cause of the free and civilized nations 
against Germany in the barbaric war which she 
forced upon the world in 1914. 

But the bulk of his work was done before this 
sharp and bitter crisis, in a period of general tran- 
quillity, through which his writing flows like a pure 
and fertilizing stream in a landscape. He was an 
optimist, but not of the rose-water variety. He 
knew that life involves painful effort, hard conflict. 
Nevertheless, he believed that for those who will 
face the conflict and make the effort, help and vic- 
tory are sure. He was a critic, delighting to read 
and comment upon the great books, — ^Homer, the 
Greek Tragedies, the Mediaeval Epics, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Milton, and the more modern classics. 
But he was not a technical and scholastic critic. 
He sought to catch the spirit and meaning of the 
literature which he loved. His work always re- 
296 



INTERPRETER'S HOUSE 

minds me of that passage in the Pilgrim's Progress 
which describes the "House of the Interpreter." 
The beauty of his comment on the classics is that 
it has a way of being right about their real signif- 
icance. 

This is true of his most important critical work, 
— William Shakespeare^ Poet, Dramatist, and Man. 
On this volume he spent long, loving, patient 
study and toil. The result was one of the best, 
clearest, most readable and illuminating books in 
Shakespearean literature. Its central thesis, — that 
Shakespeare's poetic genius, his gift of vision, pas- 
sion, and imagination, was the spring of his power, 
and that therefore, despite our imperfect knowl- 
edge of his biography, we may be sure of his great- 
ness as a man, — is thoroughly sound. It is set forth 
with admirable lucidity and abundant illustration. 

There is one of Mabie's books which is less known 
than others. It is called A Child of Nature. It 
represents his first and only attempt, so far as I 
know, in the field of fiction. But it is fiction of a 
peculiar type, — ^no plot, little dialogue, no incidents 
except birth and death and the ordinary run of 
life in the New England village where "John Fos- 
ter" spent his days. The theme of the book, de- 
297 



CAMP-FIRES 

veloped with deep fidelity and subtle beauty, is 
the growth of this quiet, simple, lonely man in fel- 
lowship with nature and a few great books. He 
dies silent and alone, never having learned to speak 
out to the world, or even to his neighbors, the wis- 
dom which he has garnered. But some brief daily 
record of his experiences, his thoughts, the light of 
life that has come to him, he has written down and 
leaves behind him. Then comes a young man of 
another type, Ralph Parkman, scholar, traveller, 
and author, to live in the old farmhouse. He finds 
the forgotten papers, and their sincerity and beauty 
take hold of him. He gives them the form and 
finish which they need, and sends them out to the 
world. 

"It was a little book which finally went forth 
from the old house, but it was very deep and beau- 
tiful; like a quiet mountain pool, it was far from 
the dust and tumult of the highways, and there 
were images of stars in it. With the generosity of 
a fine spirit the younger man interpreted the life 
of the older man through the rich atmosphere of 
his own temperament, but there was nothing in 
the beautiful flowering and fruitage which the world 
received from his hand which was not potentially 



INTERPRETER'S HOUSE 

in the heart and mind of John Foster. The silent 
man had come to his own; for God had given him 
a voice. After the long silence of a lifetime he spoke 
in tones which vibrated and penetrated, not like 
great bells swung in unison in some high tower, but 
like dear familiar bells set in old sacred places, 
whose sweet notes are half -audible music and half- 
inaudible faith and prayer and worship." 

With these words of his own I leave this brief, 
imperfect tribute to Hamilton Mabieas man and 
author. The value of his work is still living in the 
hearts of his hearers and readers whom it has en- 
lightened and encouraged. It is worthy to be 
treasured. To me the memory of his friendship 
means more than words can tell. 



299 



XX 

THE HEALING GIFT* 

10 divide and distinguish a man from the pro- 
fession in which he is engaged, — to make the 
measure of his success depend merely on his tech- 
nical proficiency and reckon his fame only by the 
discoveries and inventions which he has made, — 
seems to me fooUsh. There may be some profes- 
sions in which this is possible; for example, en- 
gineering, where one has to deal chiefly with the 
tenacity of certain minerals; or astronomy, where 
one observes the motions and calculates the con- 
stitution of distant stars; or chemistry, in which the 
supposed elements of imagined matter are tested 
by experiment and recombined by hypothesis. But 
in the more personal professions, such as teaching 
and medicine, where the unexplained mystery of 
our human nature is part of the material to be dealt 
with, no professor can be truly excellent or mem- 
orable unless he has within him the qualities which 

*Read at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, March 22, 
1920. 

300 



THE HEALING GIFT 

belong to the make-up of a really great man. Such 
a man was Sir William Osier, world-renowned phy- 
sician. 

Of his achievements in medicine and surgery, 
Doctor Welch and other honored colleagues have 
written and spoken with authority which is indis- 
putable. I speak only of the personality in the pro- 
fession, the -man William Osier, who was a famous 
doctor, and had the healing gift. 

It was in Baltimore that I first met him, when 
he was Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins 
University. He had behind his name a score of 
degrees and decorations from various universities 
all over the world, — ^honors fairly won by his work. 
But this was not the main thing about the man. 
He bore his honors, to use the American phrase, 
"not so that you would notice it." He was like the 
friend whom Tennyson describes in In Memoriam: 

** wearing all that weight 
Of learning lightly like a flower." 

He was the simplest, most modest, and most charm- 
ing of the companions whom I met at the hospitable 
dinner-tables of Baltimore. 
Do you remember his topaz eyes, never inquisi- 
301 



CAMP-FIRES 

tive but always searching and comprehending; his 
mouth with no set smile fixed on it, but always 
quick to respond in sympathy; the tranquil, 
friendly, understanding expression of his beautiful, 
dark, oval face ? 

I was never fortunate enough to be his patient, 
but I could have trusted him to "the crack o' 
doom." I should have felt that he would do for 
me all that man can do. 

Two friends of mine I ventured to commend to 
his care in England. One was a poor governess. 
The other was an EngHsh official of high rank. To 
both of them he gave an equal care and interest. 
Both of them are living now, but, alas, the friend 
who helped them through their hard time is gone. 

The next time that I saw Doctor Osier intimately 
was in Paris, in the winter of 1908-1909. As al- 
ways^ the meeting with him was delightful. But 
far more illuminative and instructive were the re- 
ports that came from my son, who was then a 
scholar at Magdalen College in Oxford. He wrote 
me that Sir William and Lady Osier were like father 
and mother to the American students there. 

At an evening party. Doctor Osier would put his 
hand on the shoulder of a shy boy and say: "You 
302 



THE HEALING GIFT 

don't care for dancing. Come into the library with 
me." And then he would show the boy wonderful 
treasures among the old books. 

The last thing that Doctor Osier gave me was 
his monograph on the bookworm, — anobium pani- 
ceum — against which he had a justifiable human 
hatred, but which, none the less, he was careful to 
study scientifically and to depict accurately in a 
fine plate of which he was proud. His attitude 
toward this noxious beast was very much like that 
which he held toward the Prussian Kultur, and 
other deadly microbes. 

Looking through his writings I find a thousand 
things which interest me. His most characteristic 
volume Mquanimitas recommends that steady tran- 
quiUity of demeanor which is essential to the prac- 
tical work of a physician; but underneath that 
counsel I find the distinctly Christian words of 
patience, charity, and hoi)efulness. I should like to 
add to the title of the book, "Magnanimitas." 

In an address which he delivered to the medical 
students at Toronto, he said the "Master Word 
of Medicine" is Work. From this he went on to 
teach the three great lessons of life. "First, learn 
to consume your own smoke. Second, we are not 
303 



CAMP-FIRES 

here to get all we can for ourselves, but to make 
the lives of others happier. (This he supports by 
the authority of Christ.) Third, the law of the 
higher life is only fulfilled by love, i. e., charity." 

His writings and addresses are saturated with the 
Bible. But he quotes also from other sources. 

In one brief address, called Man's Redemption 
of Marly made to the students of Edinburgh in 
1910, I have noted the following quotations and 
references: Isaiah, Christ, Confucius, Cardinal 
Newman, Euripides, Edwin Markham, Deuter- 
onomy, John Bunyan, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir 
Henry Maine, Plato, Sir Gilbert Murray, Robert 
Browning, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Galen, Coper- 
nicus, Charles Darwin, Aristotle, Galileo, Milton, 
Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Weir Mitchell, Poe, 
Prodicus, and Shelley, — ^with whose verse the ad- 
dress closes. Quotation on this scale would swamp 
an ordinary man. But Osier was not an ordinary 
man. He was a true scholar, who read much and 
assimilated all that he read. 

The breadth of his knowledge was an inspiration 

to his practice as a physician. It was not only 

medicine that he understood, but life. He gave 

his patients confidence and serenity, and thereby 

304 



THE HEALING GIFT 

helped them to get the benefit of such other medi- 
cines as he prescribed. 

In nothing was he an extremist: certainly not a 
pessimist; hardly an optimist, because he knew too 
much; distinctly a meliorist, because he believed 
that the advance of medical science would bring 
great good to mankind. Yet I am sure he felt that 
life meant more than mere living on earth. This, 
I think, is the conclusion of his lectures on Science 
and Immortality delivered at Harvard University 
in 1904. 

The last time that I saw him, gracious and vital 
as ever, was in Oxford in the spring of 1917, when 
America had just awakened after long slumber, 
and taken her right place in the World War. Os- 
ier's only child. Revere, was on the front-Kne, fight- 
ing for justice and freedom. That was where his 
father and mother wanted him to be. Anxiety for 
their boy, so young, so bright, so rare and delicate 
in promise, was in their hearts day and night. Yet 
it only made them kinder, more thoughtful and 
generous in ministering to others. 

I had just come out of hospital in London after 
slow recovery from a slight injury received in the 
trenches at Verdun. Doctor Osier had known of 
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CAMP-FIRES 

it and had sent me wise counsel and help. Now 
he took me with him through the wonderful war- 
hospitals of Oxford, knowing that it would humble 
and strengthen my heart to see the men who were 
bearing and suffering a thousandfold more than I, 
for the good cause. As we passed through the long 
wards of the Schools Building, and among the tents 
where the outdoor patients were sheltered in the 
lovely New College Gardens, faces brightened, eyes 
lit up with affection and hope in the presence of 
the beloved physician. There was something heal- 
ing, calming, stimulating in the soul of the man, 
shining through his outward form. He pretended 
nothing. He knew all that there was to be known. 
He never faltered nor flinched from the facts. His 
keen and evident sensibility never interfered with 
his steadiness of hand or coolness of nerve. His 
very look seemed to say, "Be brave, be patient, 
remember the other fellows, do your best to get 
well and I will help you; for the rest we must all 
put our trust in God." 

Osier's sense of humor was native, unconquer- 
able, and always full of human sympathy. He up- 
held and illustrated the ancient Hippocratic stand- 
ards in the practice of medicine: "learning, sa- 
306 



THE HEALING GIFT 

gacity, humanity, probity." No one could have 
laughed more heartily than he at the refutation 
which his own life gave to his jocose confession, 
in his farewell address at Johns Hopkins in 1905, 
of two "harmless obsessions," namely, that men 
above forty are comparatively useless, and men 
above sixty are cumberers of the ground. This was 
a jest so fine that the so-called "reading-public" 
in America could not possibly understand it. Nor 
could they be expected to note that the suggestion 
in regard to the use of chloroform to get rid of people 
over sixty was a quotation from Anthony TroUope, 
to which Osier distinctly declined to give his ap- 
proval, because as he said, "my own time is getting 
so short." 

Yet, after all, it was not so very short: fourteen 
years were left to him, and he filled them to the 
brim with noble work and happy play. Never was 
he more alive, more useful, more helpful and heal- 
ing to his fellow men than in those years, 

"Serene and bright. 
And lovely as a Lapland night," 

which he passed at Oxford. The final test that 

came to him, the news that his boy had made the 

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CAMP-FIRES 

supreme sacrifice on the field of honor in Flanders, 
he bore with that equanimity which is the crown 
of a sensitive and imselfish soul, — a soul that lives 
in God for man, and therefore can never be lost in 
sorrow nor die in death. 

After his own custom, I have been considering 
what wise and ancient words may best express his 
personality. 

Most of all he would have liked, I am sure, the 
words of Christ which he quoted to the students 
of Yale University in 1913: "Ye must be born of 
the Spirit." That spiritual birth was the secret 
of the extraordinary power with which Osier used 
his rare intellectual gifts and scientific attainments. 

But next to that quotation from his favorite 
book, the Bible, I think he would have liked these 
words written by Tacitus about his father-in-law, 
the noble Roman Agricola. 

"The end of his life brought mourning to us, 
melancholy to his friends, solicitude even to the by- 
stander and those who knew him not. The great 
public itself, and this busy, preoccupied city, talked 
of him in public gatherings and private circles. No 
one, hearing of his death, was happy or soon for- 
getful. . . . Should posterity desire to know what 
308 



THE HEALING GIFT 

he looked Kke, he was well-proportioned rather 
than imposing; there was no impatience in his face; 
its dominant expression was benign. You could 
easily believe him good, and gladly recognize him 
great. Though snatched away in his prime, he 
lived to a ripe old age, measured by renown. He 
fulfilled the true blessings of life which lie in char- 
acter. ... If there be a habitation for the spirits 
of the just; if, as wise men are happy to believe, 
the soul that is great perishes not with the body, 
may you rest in peace, and summon us from weak 
repinings and womanish tears to the contemplation 
of those virtues which it were impiety to lament or 
mourn. Let reverence, and unending thankfulness, 
and faithful imitation, if our strength permit, be 
our tribute to your memory. This is true honor: 
this is the piety of every kindred soul." 



XXI 

A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA* 

The Dean of American Letters passed away in 
the spring of 1920, gently and serenely, as he was 
wont to go in life's affairs. Having lived with a 
fine faithfulness and joy in labor for more than four- 
score years, having finished the last page of his 
many-leaved manuscript, William Dean Howell s 
laid down his pen, and set out cheerfully on his 
long voyage to the Undiscovered Country, — shall 
we not call it his Golden Wedding Journey ? 

It was sixty years ago that he made his debut 
as an author in Poems of Two Friends, written 
in comradeship with John James Piatt. Then he 
wrote a campaign Life of Abraham Lincoln, and 
afterward illuminated the ledger of his youthful 
consulship in Venice with two lovely series of 
sketches: Venetian Life and Italian Journeys, In 
1871 he published the first of his charming, inti- 
mate, fancifully realistic pieces of fiction. Their 
Wedding Journey. After that not a year passed 

*Read before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
New York. March 1. 1921. 

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A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 

without some fruit from his fertile mind: verse, 
short story, long story, novel, essay, criticism, 
sketch of travel, or commentary on life. 

He was always a painstaking writer; but it was 
never a pain for him to write. He liked it; and the 
sense of his own pleasure in finding the right words 
to describe the people and things that he had in 
his mind's eye was, (to me at least,) a distinct ad- 
dition to the pleasure of reading his work. It was 
perfectly natural for him to be an artist in litera- 
ture. His feeling of security and comfort in writing 
clear and beautiful English was at the farthest re- 
move from vanity or priggishness. It was simply 
the result of keeping good company among books 
and men. It would have been as unnatural for 
him to write loud, ungainly things, as for Raphael 
to paint a Cubist picture. 

There was something singularly humane and 
sympathetic, intelligent and teachable about his 
spirit. Though of a very quiet manner, he was 
capable, even after middle age, of strong enthu- 
siasms, — ^witness his adoration of Tolstoy. 

His own careful and almost meticulous taste in 
words did not prevent him from knowing and un- 
derstanding the colloquial speech of the day, — 
311 



CAMP-FIRES 

that broad river of so-called "slang" which carries 
on its flood much perishable rubbish, but also many 
treasures to enrich the language with new phrases 
and figures. No doubt the New England School 
of writers and the stringent intellectual climate of 
Boston influenced Howells strongly, especially at 
the beginning of his career. But no less clearly 
do we recognize in his work the genial influence of 
the Knickerbocker School, begun by Washington 
Irving and carried on by George William Curtis, 
Charles Dudley Warner, Donald Mitchell, Frank 
Stockton, Henry Bunner, Hopkinson Smith, Bran- 
der Matthews, and others. In fact there was in 
Howells a quality of appreciation and responsive- 
ness which made him open to influences of various 
kinds, as his book My Literary Passions clearly 
shows. 

As a critic, it seems to me, the lasting value of 
his work is discounted a httle by this susceptibility. 
His criticism is sincere, vivacious, often charming 
by its very personalism. But it is more a statement 
of successive likings, than a dispassionate and 
reasoned judgment. He has no real standard of 
excellence; or rather, he has too many standards 
of predilection. Yet it was this very quality that 
312 



A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 

made him so generous and encouraging as a friend 
to the younger writers of his day, though so far 
from infalUble as a prophet regarding them. 

In verse he wrote comparatively Uttle, but in 
that little he condensed the very essence of his 
deepest thoughts and emotions. Here we feel that 
wistful sadness which the true humorist so often 
carries in his heart: here we can trace the secret 
furrows which personal grief, (esj>ecially the loss 
of his beloved daughter,) ploughed in his soul : here 
also we find the humble, hardy blooms of spiritual 
faith and ethical conviction, surviving all the as- 
saults of sorrow and doubt. He did not lose the 
will to beUeve, though sometimes he had to faH 
back on sheer moral loyalty to defend it. He was 
an inveterate questioner, an habitual sceptic in the 
old Greek sense of the word, which means an in- 
quirer, a searcher. But underneath all he was a 
mystic, unwilling to surrender realities invisible and 
eternal, or to 

"Deny the things past finding out." 

Three veins, it seems to me, are clearly marked 
in his novels and stories. The first vein is a 
delicate and delightful humor, altogether native, 
313 



CAMP-FIRES 

quaint, and savory, — ^the humor which brings the 
smile before the laugh. This I find at its best in 
"A Chance Acquaintance," "A Fearful Respon- 
sibility," and that absurdly delightful love-story 
"The Lady of the Aroostook." 

The second vein is a sincere and reasonable real- 
ism, an endeavor to be true to the facts of life, ma- 
terial and spiritual. This is quite a different thing 
from the gross "naturalism," as they call it, of 
those novelists who are imperfectly house-broken. 
The stories of Howells are clean, not by force of 
prudery, but by virtue of decency. I do not know 
where to find more closely studied, accurately 
drawn, well-composed pictures, large and small, of 
real life in certain parts of America at the close of 
the nineteenth century, than in such novels as A 
Modem Instance, Dr. Breen^s Practicey and The 
Rise of Silas Lapham, The last in particular, with 
all its predominant Bostonian atmosphere, is lifted 
by its moral force into a broader region. It seems 
to me Howells's best book. I think it comes nearer 
than any other yet written to that much-called-for 
but perhaps impossible achievement, "^^e American 
Novel." 

The third vein in Howells's work is the social pas- 
314 



A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 

sion, the sense of something shamefully wrong in 
modern civilization, the intense desire for a new 
and better life. This, according to his own state- 
ment, is directly traceable to what he calls the 
noblest of his enthusiasms, his "devotion for the 
writings of Lyof Tolstoy." This came to him, he 
tells us, just after he had "turned the corner of his 
fiftieth year," — ^that is to say either in 1886 or 1887, 
according as you take the "corner" as the first or 
the last of his year. In 1888 he published Annie 
Kilburn, the earHest of his books in which this 
Tolstoyan influence is unmistakable, — sl novel which 
had such a place in his affection that he sent it to 
/me with his own portrait, as if to say, "Here I am, 
and thus I believe." 

In many volumes which followed, — A Hazard of 
New Fortunes, A Traveller from Altruria, The 
World of Chance, New Leaf Mills, and so on, — 
we find the same vein, worked with varying power, 
but always, if I mistake not, with unvarying sin- 
cerity and loyalty to his master's cause. There 
was, of course, a large elemental force in the 
Russian master that the disciple did not possess. 
But on the other hand, the American disciple had 
a keenness of perception, a balance of judgment, a 
315 



CAMP-FIRES 

shrewd common sense that the master had not. 
You might resume the (fifference roughly by saying 
that Howells was a grown-up man of power, while 
Tolstoy was an infant of genius. 

I used to have the impression that HowelIs*s ad- 
miration of Tolstoy was unlimited and indiscrimi- 
nate. I now confess that this was a mistake. It 
may have been extreme, but it was not without 
discrimination. Howells admits that his master*s 
doctrine of absolute individualism and passive re- 
sistance, like his theory in regard to Money, " though 
it may be logical, is not reasonable." He dis- 
counts the ineffectiveness of Tolstoy's allegories and 
didactic tales. He faults The Kreutzer Sonata for 
applying to marriage in general the lesson of one 
evil marriage. He concedes that in certain things 
the master's life was fallible and seems a failure. 
And he concludes with a very noble sentence: 
"There was but one life ever Kved upon the earth 
which was without failure, and that was Christ's, 
whose erring and stumbling follower Tolstoy is." 

As I look back among my personal memories of 
Howells, which run through more than thirty years, 
there comes to me somehow a gleam of rare bright- 
ness from one unforgettable season. 
316 



A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 

We had passed the summer of 1898 as neighbors 
at York Harbor on the Maine coast. There were 
others of the guild of letters in the little colony, — 
Mabie and Warner and Thomas Nelson Page and 
Kate Douglas Wiggin. We met often, and of course, 
there was an "authors' reading" for some good 
local cause to which we all contributed of "such as 
we had." Yet during the summer each of us was 
more or less busy with his own task of writing, — 
Howells more. 

But in September came a golden leisure time, 
when the air was opal with the light sea haze, and 
hints of autumnal color gleamed secretly through 
the fading green of grove and thicket, and the 
marsh-grasses turned russet brown and the bracken 
dim gold, and the asters put on royal purple, and 
the long filmy gossamers went floating with the 
slow breeze or lay on the emerald aftermath glis- 
tening with tiny drops Hke threaded diamonds. 
Then Howells walked with me in the high pastures, 
or under the pointed firs, or in the old fields where 
mushrooms grew for our gathering. The sunset 
came early but faded slowly. There was a smell 
of ripening apples and wild grapes. The blue smoke 
from farmhouse chimneys went straight up into 
317 



CAMP-FIRES 

the sky. We could feel that frost was coining, — 
not far away. 

Howells talked with me of nature and art, of 
books and people, of love and sorrow, of life and 
death and life beyond. Speaking of his own poetry 
he called himself "a sadder singer, full of doubt 
and misgiving." Nothing on earth could be to 
him what it used to be before his daughter died. 
Yet he would not give up his work, nor go mourn- 
ing silent all his days. The best that he would have 
men say of his writing was that it was true to what 
he thought and felt when he wrote it. Whatever 
there was of misery and trouble and evil in the 
world, still courage and patience, labor and fellow- 
ship were good, — ^good in themselves and good in 
their results. Justice was what we ought to work 
for, but meantime most of us must confess that 
we needed charity, — ^authors not exempt,- — nor 
preachers ! A man ought to think more of what he 
belongs to, than of what belongs to him. When 
we see something queer in others it should be a 
kind of a looking-glass. The best hope we can have 
is that God smiles at us as we do at our small chil- 
dren. The things we toil for on earth are not vain, 
— they are real enough, some of them, but all tran- 
318 



A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 

sientj^ — ^and some day, perhaps, we shall look back 
at them as not very different from these bmidles 
of mushrooms we have been gathering. "I see," 
he added, with a whimsical smile, "my bmidle is a 
little larger than yours. But that is only because 
my handkerchief is bigger. Besides, we are going 
to divide them equally when we get home." 

I still see him with that wistful smile on his lips 
and around the corners of his eyes, and hear his 
soft, slightly hesitant voice, as he says good-bye 
at the door of his cottage. 



319 



